LOGAN – At their regular meeting on Sept. 5, the members of the Logan Municipal Council heard a proposal to commit $21 million of the city’s financial reserves for the creation of a natural gas power plant.
That plant could generate about 10 megawatts of nameplate power for the city in times of need, according to Logan Mayor Holly Daines.
“Nameplate power” is a term of art used to describe a facility’s optimal power generation capacity, according to Mark Montgomery, the director of the Logan Light & Power department.
“We’ve had discussions periodically over the past couple of years,” Daines explained, laying out the workshop item on the council’s agenda, “about our (power) resources, how much we need and how to supply it.
“These natural gas turbines can ramp up really quickly, so they will work really well to augment our solar power and the other varied resources we have.”
The proposal to commit the $21 million from financial reserves for the natural gas power plant is embedded in Resolution 23-39, along with an additional $80,551 in budget adjustments for more routine purposes.
In response to a question from council member Jeannie Simmonds, Montgomery said that the proposed natural gas plant would be constructed near an already existing power sub-station near 1800 South and 1000 West.
“The nice thing is that this plan really meshes well with our existing portfolio,” Daines added.
Starting prior to the end of the year, that power portfolio will be expanding to include about 5.7 magawatts of solar power from the Steel 1B Solar farm in Box Elder County.
That facility, operated Enyo Renewable Energy, is located in Plymouth, near the Nucor Steel plant.
Enyo had already built three wind farms in the Beehive State, before starting to expand into solar facilities in Box Elder County in 2020.
Under City Resolution 22-10, approved by council members in March of 2022, Logan had contracted with the Steel 1B Solar Project to acquire 5.7 megawatts of renewable energy at a cost of $31.35 per megawatt hour.
Under Resolution 23-38, which was proposed by Montgomery as another workshop item on Sept. 5, that contract would be amended to purchase the same amount of solar energy, but at an increased cost of $34.88 per megawatt hour.
Daines said that city power managers believe that new, cleaner technology will likely come on line in the next decade, including nuclear power and improvements in battery storage capacity to increase the reliability of solar power.
In the meantime, the city’s Light & Power department can supply about 15 percent of Logan’s needs through the operation of already existing hydro, natural gas and solar generation facilities.
The remainder of the city power needs must be purchased on the open market.
City council members will likely hold public hearings and vote on Resolution 23-28 (authorizing solar energy purchases) and Resolution 23-39 (committing $21 million in financial reserves to the proposed natural gas power plant) during their next meeting on Sept. 19.