The Intermountain Power Agency (IPA), a subdivision of the US state of Utah’s local government focused on electricity generation, has announced that its Intermountain Power Project (IPP) Renewed power plant in Utah is “on track” to run on 30pc green hydrogen in 2025.

Engineering firm Mitsubishi Power has a contract to supply 840MW of turbines for the new plant, which is commercially guaranteed to be capable of running on a 30pc hydrogen and 70pc natural gas blend. IPP Renewed is still in the process of finalising the hydrogen supplier for the plant.

The project will be built near Delta, Utah on the site of the existing 1.8GW IPP coal-fired power plant—one of the largest in the United States—which will continue to run until 2025.

IPP Renewed is located near salt caverns proposed as a location for storing hydrogen as part of the Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) project. The caverns are capable of holding more than 5,500 t of hydrogen.

The ACES project will produce and transport green hydrogen at utility scale for power generation, transport fuel and industrial applications in the western US. Oil major Chevron announced that it had agreed on a framework to purchase an equity interest in the ACES project—originally a joint venture between Mitsubishi and salt dome owner Magnum Development.

IPA says that ACES has the advantage in providing storage for IPP Renewed because of its location and ownership.

“We have got the land, water, workforce and permits in place,” IPA

IPP has one 500kV DC transmission line to southern California and AC transmission links to the western grid in central Utah. The DC line capacity is 2.4GW, allowing ample room for other renewable energy resources to be developed, IPA says.

Some critics have questioned the economics of the new plant. Converting renewable energy into green hydrogen, storing it, then burning it and selling the electricity offers many opportunities for lost efficiency, according to Martin Tengler, lead hydrogen analyst at BloombergNEF.

“The inefficiency…is so blatantly obvious, there needs to be a very good case for using hydrogen,” he says, adding that for every 1 kWh of renewable energy input, only 0.3 kWh would be sold by the plant.

IPA responded that the advantage of IPP Renewed is that it can act as storage for curtailed renewable generation, noting that this type of storage is much more long-term than battery storage. Significant infrastructure is also already in place at the IPP site. 

“We have got the land, water, workforce and permits in place,” IPA says. “And we have a Gulf-quality geologic salt dome that happens to be under this plant.”

The firm would not comment on the expected capacity factor of the plant, which is planned to run on 100pc green hydrogen by 2045.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the largest municipal utility in the US, operates the IPP and will be construction manager of IPP Renewed.

Greg Huynh, LADWP's IPP operating agent manager, has said in the past that IPP hopes the economics of the project will improve as the costs of hydrogen come down.

Los Angeles has committed to net zero by 2050.

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Author: Ros Davidson