Carbon School Board members, school administration officials and the Carbon County Commissioners pose for a photo with Luigi Resta and Jim Schnepel of r Plus Energies after the board made the decision to sign an interlocal agreement with the county allowing a tax incentive plan for the company to construct a solar farm north of Wellington.
Carbon School District Press Release
The Carbon School District Board of Education agreed at its Feb. 19 meeting to sign an interlocal agreement with Carbon County to keep taxes low for a solar farm business that is moving into Carbon County.
The decision by the board helps the county with one entity that receives property taxes from land where the complex will be constructed north of Wellington. Other agencies that benefit from the tax base will also be contacted and asked to agree to the same terms.
Under the plan, a County Redevelopment Area (CRA) is created and a tax incentive is provided for the business that is developing the project. That allows them to have additional funds to set up and operate the business. However, at the end of the 15-year life of the agreement, full taxes would go to the entities involved for allowing the change. Over the long term, the improvements made and the jobs created become an asset to the tax base, which helps the school district.
Luigi Resta, the President of r Plus Energies, spoke to the board about the company, which builds large utility projects that provides power to utility companies.
“We are a constructor of utility scale projects,” he said. “That is different than those that build power systems for residential units and businesses. We sell power to utilities. Our first project, called Red Hills, was done in 2015 in Iron County and that was the first large project like this in the state.”
Resta noted that they also built a second one in 2016, which was a 100 megawatt project, similar to the one that they are proposing to build in Carbon County. He said projects of this type take a long time to complete, explaining that while Red Hills was completed in 2015, the concepts and planning for it began in 2008.
“This is a project I began looking at in 2016 when I was with another company,” he said. “It takes a long time to get one of these projects done and to be successful.”
Resta said when they first proposed Red Hills, the cost per watt of power produced was five dollars per watt. That made it a $500 million project. By the time it was built, it was only costing $1.50 per watt. Over the planning and construction time, the costs for the electricity produced had dropped dramatically because of technology improvements.
“That trend for decreasing costs has continued,” Resta said. “It is now where it will probably not go down any more because every component has been turned into a commodity.”
The steps to bringing such a project on line are many. First, one must find property that is big enough and fits the needs, and then a firm has to apply to the utility for interconnectivity. Once that is done, there are various studies to make sure the project is viable. However, during this particular process, Pacificorp froze new projects for some time because they are transitioning from the heritage power producing operations to renewable sources.
In terms of what the Wellington project will look like, Resta said the orientation of the project will be north-south and the solar panels will rotate from east to west, tracking the sun. The complex has a lifespan of 35 years. He said once it is up and running, its operation will be simple and will supply a few ongoing jobs. However, construction will take about eight months and during that time, a couple of hundred people will be working on it.
“While Carbon County has been an energy producer for many years, there will not be that many projects like this in the county,” Resta said. “There are not a lot of transmission lines that run through the county and that is what is needed when connecting these type of plants up to utilities.”
Resta said the CRA is an important part of getting the plant built because the costs are so marginal that every bit of monetary relief for getting them up and running is important.
“We actually have to provide a fixed rate price that we will charge the utility with no escalation for 20 years,” he said. Resta explained that the costs of running the plant will increase over the years based on inflation and that the solar panels actually do drop in power production a small percentage each year.
The agreement that the school district voted to enter into on the project is not with the company but with the county, who brought the matter to the board for its action.