Three new state-of-the-art engines now operating at Springville City’s Whitehead Power Plant will save Springville residents hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in power costs while also lowering carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from the plant.
The new Caterpillar natural gas-powered engines came online in July after a year-long installation process, replacing two diesel engines at the plant.
Residents were invited to view the new engines as well as overall operations at the power plant during an open house on Sept. 25.
“This is great for the city, it’s great for the residents. The biggest benefit is it help keep our power rates lower,” said Mike Pool, Springville City power generation superintendent.
Springville’s power generally comes from resources including wind, solar and hydro sources in Idaho, Wyoming and Utah as well as the Nebo Power Plant Project located in Payson, Utah. However, during peak demand periods, prices on the power market increase.
Engines at the Whitehead plant are used to generate power during these peak power demand times. “When the market prices rise to higher levels than it costs the city to run its own power-generating engines, the city’s engines are turned on to supplement — at a lower cost — the power being purchased from the market,” a Springville news release noted.
Pool said he has seen the market go up to as high as $1,200 per megawatt per hour. It costs Springville City about $42 per megawatt to run an engine for an hour.
“It saves us well over a million dollars a year on power prices,” Pool said. “If we had to buy that power off the market, we’d have to raise everybody’s rates to cover the additional cost.”
The new engines are smaller, more reliable and require less maintenance, adding to the cost savings. The old engines were expensive to repair, and it was difficult to obtain replacement parts. However, the new units produce about half the power of each legacy engine, meaning the city needs more of the smaller units to generate comparable amounts of power, said Jason Miller, director of the Springville Power Department.
The old engines ran on diesel fuel combined with natural gas, while the new engines run on natural gas only and include high-tech emissions technology, reducing the engines’ emission of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide significantly, Pool said.
“It’s a real resource and a gem for Springville to have this capability,” Miller said.
The three new engines are part of the city’s goal to replace four diesel engines installed in the Whitehead power plant in the early 1980s and 1990s. Additional generators were added later, bringing the total to seven, three of which were replaced when new Caterpillar engines were purchased in 2015.
The department would like to replace the remaining two old engines, but it is an expensive proposition; this most recent replacement of two of the diesel engines cost approximately $12 million, the news release noted.
“The purpose of the generators is to keep our rates stable,” Miller said. “When those prices are really high, we can turn on these engines and we can produce power at a much cheaper cost than buying in the market.”
