Idaho Power making progress towards eliminating coal from its mix. Another participant in the cleaning up of Western Grid. Interestingly they also mentioned looking into Nuclear.

Idaho Power announced earlier this month that it would close one of two units of the North Valmy Coal Plant in Nevada, which it co-owns with NV Energy, in December, and the second unit in 2025. It will close the Boardman Coal Plant it owns with Portland General Electric in Oregon in 2020 and could close the first of three units at the Bridger Coal Plant in Wyoming, which it co-owns with PacifiCorp, as early as 2022

As proof, the company announced Tuesday that it has signed a contract to buy 120 megawatts of solar power from Jackpot Holdings LLC, an Idaho company that plans to complete the solar array south of Twin Falls by 2022. Idaho Power will initially pay $21.75 per megawatt-hour — less than 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, among the cheapest in the nation.

The price for storage has come down but is still not low enough to provide the backup needed for intermittent power sources like wind and solar. So Idaho Power will consider buying into a proposed modular nuclear reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory in East Idaho, Anderson said. Idaho Power uses no nuclear power now, but it considers nuclear to be clean, carbon-free energy.