JEREMY DUDA - Daily Herald | Posted: Sunday, March 25, 2007 11:00 pm
Springville has some questions it wants answered before it moves forward on a 30-year contract with a Delta power plant.
The City Council decided to continue a scheduled vote on whether to approve a contract with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems for energy from the Intermountain Power Plant Phase III, an addition to the coal-fired plant in Delta. The third unit of the plant is scheduled to go online in 2012.
UAMPS moved the deadline for Springville's decision from April 1 to May 1, and the council took advantage of the change so it could sort out some issues. The council will likely vote on whether to buy into IPP at its April 17 meeting, according to city administrator Troy Fitzgerald.
One of the biggest issues surrounding Springville's possible contract with the 900-megawatt plant is how much power to buy.
According to a city study, Fitzgerald said, by 2012 Springville will need an additional 25 megawatts of base-load power -- power that is in use 24 hours a day -- which represents the maximum amount it can buy from the plant.
But the city has other options. Fitzgerald said there may be other places Springville can buy power, and the council must decide if it wants to rely so heavily on one energy supplier.
"We're all over the place in terms of what we'll actually end up purchasing," Fitzgerald said. "It looks like we're going to need 25 megawatts of base-load power. The question we've been asking the staff is, how much diversity do we wantfi"
City staff has drawn up plans for 15, 20 and 25 megawatts from IPP. Depending on how much power the city agrees to buy, the additional megawatts would cost the city between $400,000 and $800,000 a month, Fitzgerald said.
Mayor Gene Mangum said the city is better off diversifying because power suppliers can break down or have other problems that can interrupt service. Unfortunately, he said, other suppliers are hard to find.
"We'd like to put part of our eggs in that basket and part of them in another basket, but finding the second basket right now is our challenge," Mangum said.
City Councilman Rodney Burt is concerned about the costs of transmitting the power to Springville. A transmission line runs from IPP to a substation near Santaquin and the city has lines that run to Springville from there, but there is no set cost for using them.
"All of these unresolved issues can affect the final price of the power," Burt said. "That's just something that we don't have a contract on so we can't pin it down."
Burt added that there are environmental concerns as well because IPP uses coal power. Some municipalities in California have pulled out of the project due to those concerns.
"We don't know where we stand on that," Burt said.
Despite those concerns, Burt said Springville could still buy into IPP, even if the city's questions aren't answered by the May 1 deadline.
"We're going to have to make our decision," he said. "Right now it looks like it's about the only game on the market."
Mangum does not foresee those questions preventing the city from buying into IPP.
"We will sign some kind of a contract. It's just a question of how big a contract, how much," he said.
Fitzgerald said IPP would both provide low-cost power for current Springville residents and help with the city's power needs for future residents.
About 20 other municipalities in Utah are buying into IPP. In Utah County, Lehi, Eagle Mountain and Payson have approved contracts with the company.
The cities are part of UAMPS, which plans to purchase half the power produced by the new plant. Entities in California and Oregon also are buying in.
Jeremy Duda can be reached at 344-2561 or jduda@heraldextra.com.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.