Utah Intermountain 900-MW coal plant returns

LOS ANGELES, April 27 (Reuters) - Intermountain Power Agency reopened the 900 megawatt Unit 1 at the Intermountain coal-fired power station in Utah by Monday afternoon after being shut for a month of planned maintenance, according to a report by the California Independent System Operator.

The unit went offline in late March and was expected to be about a month.

About half the power from the plant goes to the Los Angeles municipal utility.

Each unit at Intermountain shuts for about a month each spring for maintenance every other year. In years the units do not shut for a month of maintenance, they shut for about a week every other year in the spring.

The 1,800 MW Intermountain station is near Lynndyl in Millard County about 120 miles (190 km) south-southwest of Salt Lake City. There are two 900 MW units, 1 and 2, at the station, which entered service in 1986 and 1987.

Most of the station's power (74.9 percent) goes to six California municipal power companies. The rest goes to 23 municipal utilities (14 percent), six cooperatives (7 percent) and one investor-owned utility (4 percent) in Utah.

The biggest owners include the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (44.6 percent), the California cities of Anaheim (13.2 percent), Riverside (7.6 percent) and Pasadena (4.4 percent), Murray City in Utah (4 percent) and PacifiCorp's Rocky Mountain Power in Utah (4 percent).

PacifiCorp is a unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc's (BRKa.N) MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co.

One megawatt powers about 800 homes in Utah and 700 homes in California. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Christian Wiessner)