Geothermal Use in Utah
Introduction & Map
Power Plants
Commercial Greenhouses
Resorts & Recreation
Aquaculture
Space Heating

Roosevelt Hot Springs, Beaver County

Utah Power, a PacifiCorp company that merged with Scottish Power in 1999, has operated the single-flash, Blundell geothermal power station at the Roosevelt Hot Springs geothermal area near Milford in Beaver County since 1984.

Blundell Geothermal Plant in the Roosevelt Hot Springs area north of Milford, Utah.

Intermountain Geothermal Company, a subsidiary of California Energy Company and the current field developer, produces geothermal brine for the Blundell plant from wells that tap a geothermal resource in fractured, crystalline rock.

The resource depths range generally between 640 and 1,830 m (2,100 and 6,000 ft).

Resource temperatures are typically between 271 and 316°C (520 and 600°F).

Wellhead separators are used to "flash" the geothermal fluid into liquid and vapor phases. The liquid phase, or geothermal brine, is channeled back into the reservoir through gravity-fed injection wells. The vapor phase, or steam fraction, is collected from the production wells and directed into the power plant at temperatures between 177 and 204°C (350 and 400°F) with steam pressure approaching 7.66 kilograms per square centimeter (109 psi).

The plant produces 26 MW gross (23 MW net), which equals the energy that would be produced by burning roughly 48,000 cubic meters (300,000 barrels) of oil annually.

Cove Fort-Sulphurdale, Beaver County

Bonnett Power Plant complex, Sulphurdale, Beaver County.

At Sulphurdale in Beaver County in 1985, Mother Earth Industries, in cooperation with the city of Provo, installed a geothermal binary-cycle power system and a steam-turbine generator.

In 1990, Provo and the Utah Municipal Power Agency dedicated the Bonnett geothermal power plant, which became the third geothermal power facility to go on-line at Sulphurdale to provide electricity for Provo.

In 2003, Recurrent Resources acquired the Sulphurdale geothermal properties. Recurrent has presently shut down the operation and plans to reconstruct the facility, eventually building a 30 to 40 megawatt binary power plant.

The estimated net output capacity from the power units is about 10 MW. Because hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas is produced, the plant includes a sulfur abatement system designed to extract up to 1.36 metric tons (1.5 short tons) per day of sulfur.

Production wells primarily tap a shallow, vapor-dominated part of the geothermal system at depths between 335 and 366 m (1,100 and 1,200 ft).

A deeper well, however, reportedly taps the liquid-dominated part of the system. Spent fluid is returned to the reservoir through a deep injection well.