Seattle City Councilmember Bruce Harrell

At the May 7th 2008 Energy and Technology Committee meeting Seattle City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco presented a briefing on the 2008 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). The IRP is a long term plan that outlines how the utility will meet the projected needs of customers over the next twenty years. The IRP helps to ensure that City Light meets their responsibility to provide customers with reliable, reasonably priced electricity with an added focus of alternative forms of energy. Given the complex nature of generating and transmitting electricity IRP’s are usually based on “load forecasts and resource options that extend well into the future.” Being that the IRP focuses on the long term it must be flexible in order to respond “to changing market conditions and future uncertainties.”