Tacoma Power announced plans to join the Western Energy Imbalance Market in 2022, alongside Bonneville Power Administration.
The announcement came in the Western EIM third quarter 2019 report.
The Western EIM uses advanced technologies to automatically find and deliver the lowest cost energy to consumers across eight western states. By optimizing resources from a larger and more diverse pool, the Western EIM better facilitates the integration of renewable energy that may otherwise be curtailed at certain times of the day, providing an added environmental benefit.
The benefits report estimates the Western EIM reduced CO2 levels by 14,485 metric tons by using surplus renewable energy that otherwise would have been curtailed. Since 2015, the effective use of carbon-free generation from the market has resulted in a gross reduction of 418,031 metric tons of CO2, which is the equivalent of removing the emissions of 87,889 passenger cars driven for one year.
So far, the Western EIM benefits have reached more than $800 million since its launch in 2014.