EDF power solutions North America has signed a 30-year power purchase agreement (PPA) to sell power generated at the 400MW Utah Solar 1 Energy project to the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) and its subsidiary, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).
The company, which is the parent company of EDF Renewables and the EDF Group International Division, expects the project to begin commercial operation in mid-2027. Itis currently under development in Millard County, Utah, on state-owned lands managed by the Utah Trust Lands Administration (UTLA). The 1,750-acre project is EDF’s first in Utah, with the majority of the solar capacity in its 26GW North American renewable energy portfolio located on the east coast and in California.
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LADWP will the recipient of the project’s output. The utility provides power to 1.4 million people in Los Angeles, alongside water to a further 681,000 customers, and is part of the SCPPA, an amalgamation of 11 local utilities.
“As the nation’s largest municipal utility, LADWP is demonstrating that decarbonisation at scale is possible—and we are not wavering in our commitment to achieve our clean energy goals,” said LADWP interim general manager Dave Hanson. “Utah Solar 1 strengthens power reliability and affordability for our customers while unlocking our ability to bring more clean energy like green hydrogen from the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) in Utah, to L.A.”
The IPP was the last source of coal in LADWP’s energy supply, meeting 14% of its energy demand in 2024, but the project has now transitioned to using a combination of natural gas and green hydrogen, ahead of plans to run on 100% green hydrogen in the future. Developments like this, and the PPA signed with EDF, will be essential if the utility is to continue its clean energy transition; LADWP met more than 33% of its electricity demand with renewable power in 2020, and aims to source all of its power from renewable energy by 2035.
The news follows a number of project advancements from EDF, including the receipt of a development consent order for an 800MW solar PV project in England and the start of construction at a solar-plus-storage project in New Mexico.
