Emery County approves conditional use permit for PacifiCorp Claussen 1 solar and battery site after public hearing

The Emery County Commission approved a Level 3 conditional-use permit for PacifiCorp’s Claussen 1 solar photovoltaic and battery energy storage project following a public hearing at its Sept. 16 meeting in Castle Dale.

PacifiCorp representatives described the project as a large solar and storage facility on company-owned land west of Highway 10, roughly four miles southwest of Castle Dale. Spencer Martin of Martin and Nicholson Environmental Consulting, who said his firm is under contract to PacifiCorp for the permit application, described the site as “a 128 megawatt capacity” photovoltaic project spread across roughly 1,800 acres of PacifiCorp-owned property; Martin said about 64% of that acreage — roughly 1,170 acres — would be devoted to arrays, inverters, access roads, a collector substation and the battery energy storage system. The project would tie into the regional grid with a roughly three-mile transmission line paralleling Highway 10 and then connecting to the Emery Substation near the Hunter Power Plant.

A PacifiCorp representative, identified in the hearing as Jeff, addressed property tax questions frequently raised by commissioners and residents. “It’s more than $300,000,000 a year according to the math that our tax colleague prepared,” Jeff said when discussing estimated tax potential from the development, but added that the company does not control how centrally assessed property is allocated across counties. He said that the project would be centrally assessed by the Utah State Tax Commission because it sits on utility-owned land.

Why it matters: commissioners, farmers and residents asked whether the project would deliver local tax benefits,…