Utah Independent Power filed a brief Dec. 2 notice with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that it is dropping, for reasons it didn’t explain, a preliminary permit on an 800-MW pumped storage project in Utah.
FERC had sent an Oct. 21 letter to the company warning that a six-month progress report on the project had not been filed in a timely fashion. If the project had gone forward from here, the company would have needed to file a license application with FERC.
The company in September 2012 had gotten a successive preliminary permit to study the feasibility of the Long Canyon Pumped Storage Project, to be located near the town of Moab in Grand County, Utah.
The proposed project would have included:
- an upper reservoir formed by a 160-foot-high by 6,750-foot-long, roller-compacted concrete (RCC) dam having a total storage capacity of 5,530 acre-feet and a water surface area of 90 acres at full pool elevation of 6,000 feet above mean sea level (msl);
- a lower reservoir formed by a 200-foot-high by 730-foot-long RCC dam, having a total storage capacity of 5,530 acre-feet and a water surface area of 110 acres at full pool elevation of 4,200 feet msl;
- an underground powerhouse roughly 750 feet long by 175 feet high by 70 feet wide; and
- three pump-turbines with a total capacity of roughly 800 MW.
The annual energy output would have been about 1,077,000 megawatthours.
Twin 25-kV circuit transmission lines would have interconnected with an existing Rocky Mountain Power transmission line via a 40-mile-long interconnection. The proposed project would have utilized water from the Colorado River, however, the applicant did not specify to FERC which segment of the Colorado River would be used.
