Utah, Arizona utilities are powered up to deal with summer heat

By Steven Oberbeck, The Salt Lake Tribune -- July 10

Temperatures are rising but for many of the state's municipal power companies, this season promises to be a lot more pleasant than the past few summers.

The newly completed $100 million Nebo Power Station in Payson is ready to provide 17 cities from Logan to Page, Ariz., with up to 140 megawatts of electricity, or enough to keep air conditioners humming in 88,000 homes during the hottest hours of the day.

That means power company executives in those cities will stay cooler under the collar this summer because they no longer will have to sweat where the necessary electricity will come from to keep their systems running.

"The 17 cities that got together to build the Nebo plant should be able to use almost all of the electricity this new facility can produce," said Jackie Coombs, spokeswoman for the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, or UAMPS. "If any power is left over, though, they will be able to sell it on the open market or to other UAMPS members."

The Nebo plant is a "combined cycle facility." It uses a combustion turbine generator similar to a jet engine to produce electricity. Instead of jet fuel, though, the turbine uses natural gas with the exhaust heat producing steam to run an additional generator.

Leon Fredrickson of Springville Power, which owns the rights to up to 18 megawatts of the plant's output, said that city decided to participate in construction of the Nebo plant in response to the volatile prices of electricity in 2000 and 2001.

Springville Power wanted to lessen its reliance on open market purchases of electricity it might need in times of high demand, Fredrickson said. "And we wanted to make sure we had access to a stable supply of power at a consistent cost."

The Nebo plant, however, will get fired up only when it is less expensive for the cities to generate electricity from natural gas than it is to buy power on the open market. "We are not going to start that plant up when it isn't economical to do so," Fredrickson said.

Over the past several weeks since the plant has become operational, it has run only a few times. However, as temperatures and the demand for electricity rise, pushing up the market price of power, the plant is expected to be used a lot more, Coombs said.

The 17 UAMPS members that participated in building the plant also include Kaysville, Lehi, Logan, Payson, St. George, Ephraim, Fairview, Hurricane, Hyrum, Monroe, Mount Pleasant, Santa Clara, Spring City, Washington and the Strawberry Electric Service District cooperative.

The engineering firm of CH2M Hill designed the plant as a subcontractor to Colorado Energy Management, which will operate the plant and maintain it.

 

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