Millard County could soon be home to the world’s largest renewable energy storage operation, Gov. Gary Herbert announced during his annual Energy Summit in Salt Lake City.
The project is a partnership between Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS), makers of turbines powered by hydrogen and natural gas, and Magnum Development, which is developing a number of fuel storage and delivery ventures near the Intermountain Power Project (IPP).
This new initiative, dubbed the Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) project, aims to eventually generate up to 1,000 megawatts of 100 percent clean energy— enough electricity to power 150,000 homes for an entire year—on demand utilizing Magnum’s unique underground salt domes to store air under high pressure. Air heats to a high temperature under high pressure or can be heated to power turbines, according to the Energy Storage Association, thus generating zero-carbon electricity during peak demand times, when other renewable sources, such as wind and solar alone, may be unable to meet the needs of power-hungry communities across the West.
The ACES project follows local permitting approval a few weeks ago of the TransWest Express high-voltage power line project, a massive 730-mile power transmission initiative that aims to connect 3,000 megawatts of renewable energy in Wyoming with customers across the western region. A converter station is planned for Millard County as well as 93 miles of line within the county’s borders.
Premium Energy Holdings, a California venture, also filed a preliminary application for a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on May 9 to build a closed-loop, 2,000 megawatt hydro electric power project utilizing Delta’s DMAD Reservoir and a proposed new reservoir in the mountains surrounding Oak City.
The culmination of all these projects would result in Millard County becoming a hub of renewable power generation and transmission initiatives serving the entire western electric grid. Millard County Chronicle Progress
