LOGAN – With minimal discussion or debate at their regular meeting on Oct. 21, the members of the Logan Municipal Council approved a 25-year power purchase deal through the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) to purchase electrical power from a solar array proposed in Iron County.
The Fremont Solar Plant project in Iron County will be a 99-megawatt photovoltaic generation facility with a 49.5-megawatts of battery storage capacity, which is expected to come online in December of 2027.
At that time, UAMPS will purchase the entire output of the Iron County plant, according to Mark Montgomery, the director of Logan Light & Power. The city’s share of that output would be 10 megawatts of solar electricity with 5 megawatts of battery storage with a four-hour discharge rate.
Having run afoul of touchy advisory board members in the past, council member and mayoral candidate Mark Anderson pointedly asked Montgomery if the proposed power purchase agreement has been presented to the Light and Power Advisory Board and the Renewable Energy & Sustainability Advisory Board (RESAB).
After learning that both panels were in favor of the solar purchase, the council members voted unanimously to approve the agreement.
The cost of that power would be $35.45 per megawatt hour, with no escalation over the 25-year life of the purchase agreement.
Originally incorporated in 1904, Logan City Light & Power currently operates hydro, natural gas and solar power generation facilities that produce more than 15 megawatts of electricity locally. The utility service also traditionally contracts with regional utilities – including UAMPS — for additional power as needed.
Recent efforts to increase power contracts though UAMPS have been controversial, however.
Fossil fuels now account for about 64 percent of Logan’s electrical capacity, while renewable sources add 22 percent and market purchases cover 14 percent of city needs.
But two coal-fired resources (the Sunnyside and Hunter plants) are retiring over the next seven years, with a combined loss of 18 mega-watts of power or about 32 percent of Logan’s base load capacity.
Much of that lost power capacity is slated to be replaced with power generated by natural gas, including a 30-year contract to purchase 15 mega-watts of electricity from the Power County Power Project in Idaho.
Since early this year, a vocal group led by Utah State University professor Patrick Belmont has loudly opposed any additional city investments in fossil fuels.
A former member of the Logan RESAB, Belmont recently endorsed mayoral challenger Alanna Nafziger in an open letter to Cache Valley Daily.