Jan 27 - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Jonathan Athens The Sun, Yuma, Ariz.

Plans to build a $250 million power plant in the Wellton-Mohawk area are going nowhere for now. And if those plans ever come to fruition, it may mean that plant will be providing electric power to customers in California customers instead of Yuma. Dome Valley Partners L.L.C. lost out on the June 2005 bid it placed with the Arizona Public Service Co. to provide 300 megawatts of electric power to the area. The contract was for 1,000 megawatts. The company, owned by Haviland Holdings and New York-based Jasper Energy, wants to build a 620

megawatt natural gas-fired power plant 25 miles east of Yuma on land owned by the federal government. It spent $8 million since 2000 to get the necessary permits to build the plant. Those permits were issued in 2003 and are good until 2008. Losing out on the bid means the company will not get the money it needs to build the plant. Jasper Energy President Robert C. Paladino said his company will not give up given this recent setback. "We're going to have a fully operating plant any day now ... we've spent millions of dollars getting

to this point," Paladino said. Paladino declined to say how much the company bid on the APS contract. APS spokesman Damon Gross on Thursday said APS recently finalized agreements with several other companies who also bid on the contract. Gross declined to name those companies and he declined to specify how much they bid, citing the confidentiality Paladino said the company always intended to sell electricity locally, but likely will now look to California. Losing out on the APS bid comes at a time when the demand for electricity here is on the rise due to community growth. According to APS figures, the "load pocket" or maximum amount of electricity that can be generated or imported to the Yuma area, stands at 394 megawatts. Last summer, Yuma came within approximately 30 megawatts of reaching that number. If demand for electricity reaches the load pocket, it would force APS to shut down electric service in certain areas or cause rotating outages lasting for 20 minutes at a time until they get through the peak demand period. Gross said APS will meet Yuma's electric power demands this summer.