With a goal to be rid of coal-fired generation by 2020, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is searching for alternatives to its stake in the Utah-based coal-fired Intermountain Power Project (IPP) facility. One option may be to covert some of the units to run on natural gas.

The nation’s largest municipal utility confirmed in its latest integrated resource plan (IRP) last December that it was pursuing a strategy of early divestiture of its coal-fired generation, which accounted for 39% of the energy delivered to city utility customers in 2010.

IPP officials told the Los Angeles Times Tuesday that the gas-fired option is now being pursued in Utah, while LADWP’s other major coal-fired generation source, the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona, holds a land lease that is expiring in 2019. The IPP conversion to gas in Utah would have to be agreed to by 36 utilities now buying power from the multi-unit facility.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has set the 2020 target to give up the city utility’s coal-fired power supplies, and new LADWP General Manager Ron Nichols committed last year to nearly doubling the $4 billion muni’s reliance on natural gas for electricity generation while phasing out coal over the next two decades (see Daily GPI, June 7, 2011).

Nichols told the newspaper that ending the city utility’s total coal-fired purchases in the next eight years would be a “Herculean effort.” Officials at LADWP won’t talk about specific plans for IPP, which it operates as the major offtaker among the mostly public-sector utilities in Utah and California that take portions of the nearly 2,000 MW Intermountain capacity.

Separate consulting reports in January pointed toward significant opportunities for coal-to-natural gas switching in the electric generation sector particularly if the low natural gas prices seen this year continue and stay below $4.00/Mcf in the long term. (see Daily GPI, June 3, 2011).

©Copyright 2012Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.