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Rocky Mountain Power to Build 20 Megawatt Solar Farm in Utah

city-data.com
Rocky Mountain Power's new solar farm will be built in Holden, Utah.

Rocky Mountain Power will soon be offering its customers the chance to use solar energy, even if they don’t plan to install panels on the roof. The utility company announced Monday that it’s contracted with a company called juwi to build a solar farm.

The 20 megawatt solar farm will be located in Holden, Utah, in Millard County. Rocky Mountain Power spokesperson Paul Murphy says customers will be able to subscribe to some or all of their electricity from solar power, without having to install panels themselves.

“Some people don’t want to have rooftop solar, but they do want renewable energy and this gives them that option,” Murphy says.

Subscriptions will be available for private homes, businesses, and municipalities. Residential customers will receive a “locked-in” rate of 7.7 cents per kilowatt hour, plus about 4 cents for transmission and distribution, totaling 11.7 cents.

“We plan to have a rate calculator so people can see how much it would cost them for typical use,” Murphy says. “For customers who use a lot of electricity in the summer, this could actually save them a lot of money.”

The program will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. The project will be built this year and is slated to start next January. Environmentalists say Rocky Mountain Power should be shifting much more of its energy sources to renewables. Murphy says the company will build more solar farms if enough customers subscribe.

Andrea Smardon is new at KUER, but she has worked in public broadcasting for more than a decade. Most recently, she worked as a reporter and news announcer for WGBH radio. While in Boston, she produced stories for Morning Edition, Marketplace Money, and The World. Her print work was published in The Boston Globe and Boston.com. Prior to that, she worked at Seattleââ
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