In Focus
IPP Renewed: A New Energy Era
by Emily Rose Oachs
On a remote stretch of Utah, about two hours south of Salt Lake City near a town called Delta, miles of flat land reach to mountains that score the horizon. Here stands the Intermountain Power Project (IPP), the last remaining coal-fueled facility in LADWP’s energy portfolio. Since the 1980s, its stack has towered over the vast, surrounding landscape, puffing out a column of steam that drifts high above the arid earth until it dissipates in a desert breeze.
Far from Utah’s capital and even further from the mind for most Angelenos, IPP today is an important site for energy transition and innovation. Next year, in mid-2025, IPP’s two coal-fueled generation units are slated to retire. When that happens, two new hydrogen-capable gas units—currently under construction—will come online. These changes are part of a portfolio of projects called IPP Renewed.
“IPP is a very important facility for our 2035 clean energy goals, as it is our first facility that will be green hydrogen enabled. Green hydrogen is a very important fuel source for our portfolio. When we have extra energy that we cannot dispatch, we’re able to produce hydrogen for generation and energy storage.”
Janisse Quiñones, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Engineer
Forty electrolyzer stacks will convert renewable energy into green hydrogen through a process called electrolysis, which uses electricity to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. At start up, the new generation units will be capable of running on a fuel blend of 30 percent green hydrogen and 70 percent natural gas. In the near future, technology upgrades will allow the generation units to be fueled by 100 percent green hydrogen. Carbon emissions will decrease significantly once the new generation units come online. They will drop by almost 70 percent, from 2,035 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity generated to 630 pounds per MWh generated. When the units are fueled by 100 percent green hydrogen, those CO2 emissions will drop still further, to zero.
LADWP CEO and Chief Engineer Janisse Quiñones, along with others from LADWP and project partners, recently toured IPP and the ongoing construction to see the project and its significance firsthand. It is important to the Department’s strategy and commitment to transition to 100 percent clean energy by 2035, offering an alternative energy source with the reliability and dispatchability of coal, but without the carbon emissions.
The significance of IPP Renewed also reaches far beyond the City of Los Angeles and its energy goals. No other green hydrogen generation facilities exist at this scale. When it comes online in mid-2025, IPP Renewed will be the first and only generation facility of its kind in the world, integrating a suite of mature technologies at utility scale while utilizing existing infrastructure to the maximum degree possible. Its innovation stands to pave the way for others in the energy industry looking for fuel solutions that are all at once reliable, dispatchable, and clean.
The origins of the Intermountain Power Project date back to the 1970s, when utilities in Utah and California wanted to create a new energy source to supply dispatchable, reliable power to customers. These utilities came together to form a partnership in IPP, with the first coal-fueled unit at the generation plant coming online in 1986. Over the decades, this partnership proved to be valuable and mutually beneficial. Utah participants were guaranteed that excess energy generated would be purchased by California partners; for LADWP, it provided Los Angeles access to inexpensive energy to support its burgeoning population, all while keeping rates low. However, IPP’s coal-fueled units also brought significant carbon emissions, which eventually initiated plans to transition the facility to run on cleaner fuel technology.
IPP encompasses more than just its electricity generation facilities. It also includes two separate transmission systems: one consisting of two AC lines that link to the Western grid in central Utah and Nevada, and the Southern Transmission System (STS), a 488-mile DC line that stretches to Adelanto, California, in San Bernardino County. These transmission systems are key in connecting the project’s thirty-five participants—which include twenty-three municipalities in Utah, six Utah Cooperatives, and six municipalities in California—with the energy IPP generates.
LADWP plays an important role at IPP, and not only because it is the largest participant and purchaser of energy. It also collaborates closely with two other agencies to manage and operate IPP. The Intermountain Power Agency (IPA) is comprised of the 23 Utah municipalities that own IPP’s generation and transmission assets. The Intermountain Power Service Corporation (IPSC) employs the workforce that staff and maintain those assets. And LADWP serves as the operating agent and project manager, as it has since the 1980s. These roles will continue with IPP Renewed.
IPP Renewed’s green hydrogen will be supplied by the Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) site, owned by ACES Delta, LLC. Located adjacent to IPP Renewed, ACES Delta is a partnership between Chevron and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Hydrogen Infrastructure, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Power Americas. ACES Delta houses those forty electrolyzer stacks for green hydrogen production, and it will also provide storage for that green hydrogen in underground salt caverns.
LADWP and its partners plan for the IPP Renewed’s new generation units to be smaller than those of IPP. Net capacity will decrease from 1,800 MW to 840 MW once the transition is complete. Decreasing the capacity of IPP Renewed frees up more space on the transmission lines to deliver a greater amount of renewable energy to Los Angeles.
The name “IPP Renewed” reveals much about the project’s approach to its impending energy transition. The project aims to refresh how IPP generates and distributes energy in order to meet today’s demands, rather than starting completely over. As much as it can, the project maximizes IPP’s existing generation and transmission infrastructure—building from whenever possible, rather than building new.
The new generating units are being installed where IPP had initially planned to construct two additional coal-fueled units that were never built. The Southern Transmission System is being modernized with new High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Converter Stations, which will extend its lifespan by another 30 years. Existing transmission interconnections will bring in the excess renewable energy that will be used to produce green hydrogen via electrolysis. And the area already has a skilled energy workforce, cultivated by the project over the past few decades.
Beyond that infrastructure, other important factors make the IPP Renewed site particularly optimal for green hydrogen production and generation. Adequate energy storage is an issue many utilities face as they work to expand their renewable and clean energy sources. While batteries are capable of storing energy for shorter periods, longer term, and even seasonal, storage is also needed.
For IPP Renewed, long-duration storage of green hydrogen is not an issue. Hidden deep underground near IPP Renewed, impermeable salt caverns capable of holding thousands of tons of hydrogen are being shaped and formed inside a geologic salt dome via a process known as solution mining. At a depth of more than 3,000 feet, the two salt caverns are being hollowed out with water stored at the surface, in a series of rectangular brine ponds. Once complete, each cavern will be approximately the same size as the Empire State Building and able to hold about 5,500 tons of hydrogen. The two caverns filled to capacity have the ability to power IPP Renewed, when fueled by the 30 percent green hydrogen blend, for two and a half months. This large capacity green hydrogen storage will act as a reserve when the amount of renewable energy available outpaces demand.
“The scale of energy storage at the Intermountain Power Project is unprecedented, providing up to 300 GWh of potential storage capacity for LADWP. When completed in 2025, IPP Renewed will be an industry benchmark to show the world what can be achieved through regional collaboration and partnering.”
Kevin Peng, IPP Renewed Program Manager
Today, IPP’s site is a scene of transition, where the energy solutions of the past are making way for the innovations of the future. For now, the coal units continue to operate to provide power to the project’s participants. But the sprawling complex of the generation plant now buzzes with construction while scores of neon-vested workers build the structures for a greener future, a new energy era for LADWP, and a model for the world.
Timeline
1986: Construction on the Intermountain Power Project’s first coal-fueled generating unit was completed.
1987: Construction on IPP’s second, and final, coal-fueled unit was completed.
2016: IPP became the last coal-fueled generation plant in LADWP’s energy portfolio with the sale of the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona.
2021: Los Angeles announced its commitment to reaching 100% clean energy by 2035. Construction began on IPP Renewed.
2022: Coal power from IPP made up about one-eighth of Los Angeles’ energy.
2023: Solution mining on IPP Renewed’s first salt cavern to be used for green hydrogen storage began at the ACES Delta site.
Late 2024: Mining on the first salt cavern is expected to be completed in October, with the second expected to be completed in July 2025. Upgrades to the Southern Transmission System will begin.
2025: The coal units at the Intermountain Power Project will retire. Construction on IPP Renewed will conclude, and the new generating units capable of running on a 30% green hydrogen blend will come online.
2028: Construction on the Southern Transmission System will conclude.
2035: Los Angeles’ 100% clean energy target
