The state's four largest electricity providers will partner on a large-scale commercial solar generating plant.
El Paso Electric, Xcel Energy, the Public Service Co. of New Mexico and Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association together issued a request for proposals to find developers for the construction of a solar parabolic trough generation facility to provide solar electricity to each of the utilities by 2012, according to a release issued late Monday.
The requirements in the RFP include locating the plant in New Mexico, storage of thermal energy generated through solar parabolic trough technology and the ability to deliver between 211,000 and 375,000 megawatt-hours per year. That's enough to power between 29,000 and 52,000 average New Mexico homes. (A "megawatt hour" means one megawatt acting over a period of one hour. A megawatt measures the capacity of an electric generator and a megawatt hour measures the actual amount of electricity it produces over a certain period of time.)
The RFP came out of a feasibility study commissioned by the utilities last year and conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute. It found that the most feasible solar technology currently available for a large-scale New Mexico plant is the parabolic trough.
Solar trough technology relies on curved parabolic mirrors lined up in rows. The mirrors concentrate heat onto oil-filled tubes, which then generate steam. That turns a generator and produces electricity. If the technology is combined with thermal storage, the systems can even generate electricity at night and during cloudy periods.
If a viable project emerges from the RFP process, utility partners expect to have a contract negotiated by the end of 2008 and a project could come online by the end of 2011.
A mandate from the Public Regulation Commission requires utilities to derive at least 20 percent of their renewable energy from solar by 2011. The state's renewable portfolio standard requires utilities to derive 20 percent of their electricity from clean sources by 2020. Rural cooperatives must derive at least 10 percent of their electricity from clean energy sources by 2020.
El Paso Electric (NYSE: EE) is a regional electric utility providing generation, transmission and distribution service to 357,000 retail and wholesale customers in west Texas and southern New Mexico. Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL) is a large electricity and natural gas company operating in eight Western and Midwestern states with 3.3 million electricity customers and 1.8 million natural gas customers.
PNM is a subsidiary of PNM Resources (NYSE: PNM), an energy holding company based in Albuquerque. It provides electric utility service to 487,000 customers and natural gas service to 492,000 customers in New Mexico. It also sells power on the wholesale market.
Tri-State Generation & Transmission is based in Denver and is the wholesale supplier to 12 member electric cooperatives in New Mexico, 18 in Colorado, eight in Wyoming and six in Nebraska, which in turn provide electricity to about 1.4 million consumers.
