In a bid to save coal for use during the high-use summer months, Intermountain Power Project recently shut down one of its two coal units.
Officials say they are currently running one unit at about 300 megawatts. The plant’s generating capacity totals 1,800 megawatts.
“We are struggling to get coal from the mines in Utah or even mines outside of Utah,” said Jon Christensen, Intermountain Power Service Corp.’s superintendent of technical services. “COVID has played havoc with the transportation industry. You see stories all the time about ships outside the harbors, they can’t get in. UP (Union Pacific railroad) cut back during the pandemic and they don’t have the manpower or the resources to maintain our deliveries we have today. So we had to take a unit offline because we could not get enough coal.”
Christensen made the comments during a Delta Chamber of Commerce luncheon last Wednesday.
He was joined by other IPP and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials. They were there to discuss the pending transition of IPP from coal to natural gas and hydrogen power generation.
Asked how the coal shortage is impacting their usual electricity customers, Christensen said customers downstream are being forced to buy from other sources. I
PP sells about 80 percent of its electricity to municipal consumers in California. IPP is the second largest consumer of Utah coal, according to an October 2020 IHS Markit report titled “Evaluation of past coal purchases for Intermountain Power Agency.”
The largest consumer of Utah coal is Pacificorp, another electric power generator.
Between 2010 and 2020, almost 83 percent of Utah coal resources were used in power generation, according to the IHS Markit report. IPP is on track to close its coal units in 2025, though some state legislators have said they will push to keep the units operating after IPP switches to natural gas and hydrogen power generation.
State Sen. Derrin Owens and Rep. Steven Lund both said during a town hall meeting in Delta last week they would like to keep the coal units operating for the benefit of Utah municipalities who aren’t under the same climate control restraints IPP’s California customers are.
However, IPP has told its employees that such a scenario would likely costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
“To continue operations after 2025, the Project would have to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with new environmental regulations for coal ash management and nitrogen oxide emissions,” stated an informational pamphlet sent to employees recently.
Also, the power producer warned that future limits on carbon emissions are always possible hindrances to such future operations.
