Integrated Resource Planning

Integrated Resource Planning (IRP)

​The Energy Planning and Management Program requires WAPA customers to periodically submit Integrated Resource Plans (IRP) or an approved alternative:

• Minimum Investment Report
• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Report
• Small Customer Plan

The IRP must evaluate the full range of alternatives to provide adequate and reliable service to a customer’s electric consumers at the customer’s or member’s lowest system cost. Ideally, the planning process assesses new generating capacity, power purchases, energy conservation and efficiency, cogeneration and district heating and cooling applications and renewable energy resources. Robust public involvement should be a part of the process, as well, allowing the utility to share upcoming challenges with its consumers and to get their input on solutions that best address the community’s diverse wishes and concerns.

In 2011, WAPA implemented three revisions to its IRP rules:

• Eliminating the requirement that members of a member-based association (MBA) unanimously approve the MBA’s IRP
• Encouraging customers to cooperate on preparing regional IRPs
• Making customers’ current IRPs more accessible to the public by placing them on WAPA’s or the customer’s Web site

Submit Your Annual IRP Update Online

WAPA offers step-by-step online reporting tools to streamline the process of submitting your annual integrated resource plan. Even if your reporting deadline isn’t coming up, take a moment to explore these pages. Your suggestions for refining and improving these programs are always welcomed.

• Compliance training program – Guidelines f​or submitting your IRP, covering what each plan and annual report must contain by law; how WAPA reviews plans, evaluates compliance and monitors implementation.
• Data collection program (PDF) – Standardized, pre-approved format for submitting the annual reports and alternative plans (Small Customer Plan, Minimum Investment Report or Energy Efficiency and/or Renewable Energy Report).
• Register
• IRP request manager​
• Account registration and management instructions​ (PDF)​
• Log ​in​
• Rocky Mountain Region – IRP Training Recording​ 05-17-2023  (YouTube​)​​​

It is not mandatory for customers to use the IRP data collection program, just easier! If you would prefer to submit your report manually, contact your Energy Services representative.

NEW! Instructional video for completing the IRP manual template

Watch the instructional video on YouTube – How to complete the IRP manual template (YouTube)

Below are more resources to help customers effectively plan to meet their consumers’ needs:

• Criteria
• FOIA information
• Resource Planning Approval Criteria (PDF) (10 CFR  Part 905) – (PDF 149 KB)
• Other WAPA publications

Request further information or assistance on your own IRP.

Customer Integrated Resources Plans  (IRP)

Effective July 21, 2008, WAPA requires that current customer IRPs must be available to the public through the WAPA Web site, either in pdf format or by a link to the customer’s Web site.

Select from the regions below to look up a WAPA customer:

• Colorado River Storage Project
• Desert Southwest
• Rocky Mountain
• Sierra Nevada
• Upper Great Plains

Customers may request that confidential commercial and financial information not be disclosed when they file their IRPs. If WAPA agrees that the information is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, those sections will be deleted from the plan before it is posted on the WAPA Web site.