(gentle music) - [Raeann] You can learn a lot about a place by its name.

And that's especially true for Carbon County in Eastern Utah.

For nearly 150 years, coal has been a major economic force in the area, but that is changing.

- [Tony] Carbon County for its name sake, we've always been into energy production.

Growing up here, it was the coal was the biggest thing, but over the last few years, we've seen that change.

2019 was our last coal mine operating within Carbon County.

So for the last four years, we have not had any coal extraction within our county limits.

- [Raeann] As market pressures push more energy production away from fossil fuels, the area is adapting.

- As far as being an energy producing community, we're pretty proud of that.

- [Raeann] This county, perfectly positioned to harness the power of coal, is also perfectly positioned to harness another power.

(gentle music) The sun.

(gentle music) - This Castle Valley range in southern Utah is some of the best solar in the country and some of the best solar in the world because what we have here is 340 sunny days a year.

We're at roughly 5,800 foot elevation, so we're closer to the sun.

So there's less particulate diffusion that happens from the sun, and the solar panels just crank power.

- [Raeann] But can solar energy provide the same stability as fossil fuels?

- [Tony] Our consumption of electricity is growing faster than it ever has.

(gentle music) - And what happens when the sun isn't shining?

I'm PBS Utah's Raeann Christensen.

Find out how Utah is innovating energy production.

This is "Utah's Power Pivot."

There's a major shift happening right below the scenic landscapes these neighboring Utah counties are known for.

Driving around Carbon and Emery counties, you're gonna see solar panels popping up everywhere.

- You can imagine that there's 78 solar panels on one row, and then each row is individually, has a individual DC motor that turns it.

- [Raeann] Since being completed in 2022, the Graphite Solar Project in Carbon County is pumping out a lot of electricity with more than 247,000 solar panels.

I have the chance to chat with Luigi Resta, who works for rPlus Energies.

That's the company behind the massive solar farm.

- And the benefit of solar against other technologies is there's no fuel cost.

The sun comes up and that's our, the fuel that we have.

So it's almost free power.

You pay to put it in.

And then for the life, which this is expected to last 35 years, you're getting free electricity.

It does produce power every day that the sun comes up.

And one thing that we know is the sun comes up every day.

Sometimes, we have stormy weather and clouds and rain, and it won't be as optimal of solar output as it could be.

The issue is what do you do when it's not sunny?

And that is changing with the development of new battery technologies.

Almost all solar projects will have a battery component so that you can imagine the middle of the day, a big cloud comes over, the battery then picks up what it's not producing and pushes the power out.

- [Raeann] rPlus energies is rolling out next gen battery technology in its newest project, the Green River Energy Center in neighboring Emery County.

Now, these aren't your everyday batteries.

They're designed to store solar power.

So even when the sun decides to play hide and seek or it's nighttime, you still got steady flow of electricity.

It's like having a reservoir of sunlight that you can tap into anytime.

This is a huge step forward in making solar energy more reliable.

- [Luigi] We're adding battery or energy storage to them to allow for the dispatch through times when the utility really needs it and when the solar project might produce it.

So our Green River Project will have a significant battery component to it so that the reliability for the consumer is still, is still there.

- [Raeann] The massive project will cost around 750 million bucks.

It's spread out over 3,200 acres, just north of this cozy little town called Moore.

The Green River Energy Center could change the local Emery County economy as well in a good way.

Over in the neighboring Carbon County, they're already feeling a financial boost thanks to the Graphite Solar Project.

County commissioner Tony Martinez sees the progress firsthand.

- You know, from a county commissioner point of view, this land open and not being used was generating roughly about $1,300, this whole property, in taxes per year.

Once they put this solar project on it, we're getting over a hundred thousand.

So for a county commissioner and an incentive side, this was an easy decision to make.

- Why is it important to do renewable?

- You know, it fits here.

Carbon County for its namesake, we've always been into energy production.

Growing up in Carbon County, we have this.

We have blue skies, we have a lot of open land.

From the mining industry, we have a lot of infrastructure that was here.

So as our power plant closed in 2015, it opened up a lot of capacity on the lines.

So it's been kind of a natural attraction to have solar development in this area.

We have the land, we have the infrastructure, and it just seemed like a good fit.

- We, as a company, rPlus Energies, really actually like to work in communities that have a history of energy, and it can be in a variety of different forms.

Here, it's coal.

- [Announcer] The coal resources of Utah are enormous.

With one fifth of the state underlaid with this valuable combustible mineral.

- [Tony] And coal mining and coal power plant generations, we view that that history is really important for, to continue the legacy of an energy community.

And so we go in with that concept that we're not here to change that, we're here to continue it and to offer options.

- So we've lost a lot of the coal jobs, but people are transitioning into a different form of employment.

- Obviously, we don't have as many coal mining jobs, but we've changed into different, like our university is doing some different things.

They're trying to get some engineering going.

Our nursing programs, our welding programs here is just topnotch.

So we've looked at other opportunities, but now we're more forced into doing different things that were kind of out of the norm.

- [Raeann] It's a big transition for communities like these, but they are determined to stay relevant in the energy world while also embracing a greener future.

- So we've really stepped away from the coal, but we're still part of the energy.

We have, from the coal, we have the infrastructure here.

We're just maintaining to still be an energy producing county.

We're just doing it in a different generation style.

Funding for Utah's Power Pivot is provided in part by My Good Fund, the Norman C and Barbara L Tanner Charitable Support Trust, and by donations to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(gentle music)