In a recent interview with the American Public Power Association, Mark Montgomery, executive director for Logan City Light and Power, the utility that serves the public power community of Logan, Utah, detailed the successful completion of a battery energy storage system in Logan and discussed the utility’s current generation portfolio mix and how Logan City Light and Power approaches resource planning.
The utility and WATTMORE recently announced the successful completion of a 125 kW, 500 KWh battery energy storage system in Logan.
In a recent episode of APPA’s Public Power Now podcast, Montgomery was asked to offer additional details on the system and detail how is the system going to help the utility understand how to implement a larger scale energy storage system.
“We came up with the concept with a member of our Power Board. His name is Mike Taylor. And we kind of came up with the idea to apply for an APPA DEED grant,” he noted. “And we would purchase a smaller scale bulk energy storage system so that we can kind of see what that looks like. I know other utilities are putting these energy storage systems in on a much larger scale, but we wanted to see what this would look like since we feel like we're kind of a smaller utility, so we applied for that grant and we received it.”
As part of the grant, “we proposed that we do different scenarios and collect data and produce some reports on what this looks like and while this is a small-scale installation, we feel like we can scale the data up to a bigger installation so that it makes sense. So we came up with scenarios like peak shaving or emergency operation of our control peak shifting. And that's kind of kind of how we came up with the idea and that's how we're hoping to see how a bulk energy storage system might benefit our utility.”
Montgomery also discussed the utility’s current generation portfolio mix and how Logan City Light and Power approaches resource planning.
“We have a pretty wide range of resources. We've got hydro from the Colorado River storage project. We've got wind in Wyoming. Of course, we have some coal resources, natural gas generation resources. We've got a waste heat generation resource down in southern Utah. We have several solar resources. We have some natural gas generation that we own behind the meter here in Logan,” he said.
“We also have some run of the river hydroelectric that is behind the meter located up the Canyon here in the city -- near the city. And then we've got lots of projects in study phase including more natural gas, some solar plus storage possibilities and also a geothermal [project] that's looking pretty promising. And as we plan, like everyone else, we look to push our carbon free resource mix higher and higher as we can, but we are a little bit limited to just what's available locally and what we can get wheeled in. But we're always looking and I talk to different companies who want to...sell us power. That's kind of a regular ongoing thing, to be honest.”
Benefits of UAMPS Membership
Montgomery also discussed the ways in which Logan benefits from being a member of the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems.
“Logan City by itself is a pretty small utility but we are one of the larger members of UAMPS,” he noted.
“UAMPS gives us a lot of power in the market as a bunch of smaller utilities tied together. We have a lot more leverage and then just because these entities that want something, whether it be solar or natural gas or geothermal, whatever, they know that UAMPS is known out there, so they know that they come to UAMPS to sell their product,” he said.
“I would say one of the other advantages to UAMPS is they help us vet these proposals that just frankly, I don't have the expertise or the time in my department alone to do this, but UAMP’s will vet them through their in-house legal counsel.”
And also “just do cost analysis on it to see if first, the guys coming to sell a product really have gone through and dotted all their I’s and crossed all their T's, and just as a little entity, I just don't have that expertise or time to do that. So we think it's pretty valuable and UAMPS is also our scheduling authority, so a lot of this makes sense that it comes through them.”
