Solar power Boom
Aug 23 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Vic Kolenc El Paso Times,
Texas
A proposed solar power plant in Santa Teresa, which would supply
electricity to El Paso Electric, isn't the only solar development going
on in this area.
Applications to use federal land for one solar project in the Afton,
N.M., area, just south of Las Cruces, and two in the Lordsburg, N.M.,
area, about 140 miles west of El Paso, have been filed with the U.S.
Bureau of Land Management.
Also, the BLM recently designated three areas in New Mexico, including
two near Las Cruces, as solar-energy study areas, which are aimed at
eventually speeding up the federal permitting process for solar power
projects. Years-long permitting processes to put projects on federal
land is a problem for developers of solar energy.
Besides the New Mexico study areas, the BLM study is looking at 21 other
solar study areas in Arizona, California, Nevada and Colorado. Texas is
not part of the study because it has no BLM land.
A consortium of utilities and power developers led by Southwestern Power
Group II, a Phoenix power plant developer, is are working on a proposal
to build a 460-mile electric-transmission line from Socorro or Lincoln
counties in New Mexico to near Casa Grande, Ariz., to carry electricity
primarily generated from solar, wind and geo thermal power projects. The
line and proposed electric substations are called the SunZia Southwest
Transmission Project.
"New Mexico has a really good solar resource," and has very good
incentives in place for solar developers,
said Jessica Singh, a solar business developer for Iberdrola Renewables
in Portland, Ore. It has an application through its subsidiary, Pacific
Solar Investments, with the BLM to put a 900-megawatt solar plant in the
Lordsburg area. Iberdrola is developing a portfolio of solar sites
around the country.
The solar development in New Mexico won't have any immediate benefits
for El Paso Electric, which has signed a 20-year agreement with NRG
Energy of New Jersey to buy all the power from a proposed 92-megawatt
solar power plant in Santa Teresa to meet El Paso Electric's New Mexico
government requirements for renewable energy, said Ricardo Acosta,
manager of resource and delivery planning at the company. But in several
years, when the company will seek proposals to expand its renewable
energy generation, these proposed New Mexico projects may come into
play, Acosta said. The company expects to meet its Texas renewable
energy requirements by purchasing power from suppliers, he said.
"Hopefully a regional market develops" in the future, and utilities will
be able to "share renewable energy resources," he said.
Transmission line
Andrew Wang, senior development manager for SolarReserve, a Santa
Monica, Calif., company with plans to develop solar power plants
throughout the Southwest, including in New Mexico, said, "Transmission
is a major bottleneck in the United States" for the development of solar
power and other renewable energy.
SolarReserve now has an application with the BLM for a solar plant near
Lordsburg. It unsuccessfully tried to win El Paso Electric's solar power
project with a proposed site near Deming.
"In most places," Wang said, "there's not enough capacity on (existing
power) lines" for solar, wind, or geothermal developers to add more
power, or the areas where renewable energy is being developed are so
remote that no power lines exist.
SolarReserve is not counting on new transmission lines being built for
its solar projects, but if the SunZia project was built, it would be
good for the renewable energy industry, Wang said. It would allow the
moving of solar energy out of the state to more populous areas, he said.
Ian Calkins of Phoenix, a spokesman for the SunZia project, said the
project would promote development of renewable energy in New Mexico,
Arizona and other areas on the Western power grid.
"We're creating a pathway to market for wind, solar and geothermal -- a
pathway that doesn't currently exist," Calkins said.
But the process of getting a new transmission line built is long and
expensive. The project would cost more than $1 billion and requires
getting permits to go through federal, state, and private land, Calkins
said.
The Bureau of Land Management is accepting comments through Friday on
the proposed project as part of its process to do an Environmental
Impact Statement for the project.
Storing energy
Besides transmission, another problem for the solar industry has been
storing solar power for use when the sun isn't shining.
Jetstream Wind, a Santa Fe company, hopes to start construction in a few
months on a $219 million, 10-megawatt hydrogen plant and solar panel
project on about 600 acres on a ranch east of Truth or Consequences to
demonstrate that renewable energy can be stored for later use as
electricity, said Ornesha De Paoli, a company spokeswoman.
Jetstream plans to build a solar farm of photovoltaic panels, and then
use the solar energy from those panels to make gaseous and liquid
hydrogen, which can be stored and later used to power a generator to
send electricity through the electric power grid, De Paoli said. The
liquid hydrogen also could be sold for use at the New Mexico spaceport,
she said.
Being able to store solar, wind and other renewable energy for later use
has been a stumbling block to development, De Paoli said.
Wang, at SolarReserve, said his company is using a liquefied molten salt
technology, which is able to store solar heat for weeks, so the heat can
be transferred at anytime to heat water to power steam generators. The
salt is a mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate, the ingredients used
in garden fertilizer. The company has the exclusive worldwide license to
market the technology developed by a United Technologies Corp.
subsidiary.
Being near existing transmission lines, in flat areas and in high solar
radiation areas are circumstances solar project developers look at when
identifying potential sites.
"The Lordsburg area has the highest solar radiation (in New Mexico) and
the flattest areas," and is near transmission lines operated by both El
Paso Electric and PNM, New Mexico's largest electric utility, Wang said.
SolarReserve has a proposal to put a 100- to 250-megawatt, $700 million
solar power tower with molten salt energy storage at a 4,480-acre BLM
site northeast of Lordsburg. However, developing that site is contingent
on getting PNM or another utility to buy the power, and that's not in
the works at this time, Wang said. El Paso Electric co-owns a substation
near the Lordsburg site.
SolarReserve looked around the El Paso area when El Paso Electric was
seeking a company to develop a solar project, but the solar radiation
drops off in the El Paso area, Wang said. "You have to increase the
price for (projects) with lower solar energy. When you're a small
company like us, you have to focus on places with the highest
opportunities." Areas in West Texas would be further down the list, he
said.
900MW project
Iberdrola Renewables also has an application with the BLM for a proposed
900-megawatt solar plant using parabolic trough technology at a site
about 12 miles northwest of Lordsburg. It has an application for 24,000
acres, but the project would take about half that land, according to the
company. The cost of such a large solar plant could exceed $3 billion,
according to the company. It would be built in three, 300-megawatt
phases. Iberdrola would need a contract from a utility before it could
construct a solar plant, a company official said.
EnXco Development Corp., a part of EDF Energies Nouvelles Co., of Paris,
has an application with the BLM to put a solar plant using photovoltaic
panels on a section of 3,000 acres in the Afton area, just south of Las
Cruces. It has not determined how big the plant might be. The company is
in the process of identifying land for solar projects, said Sandra
Briner, a spokeswoman at enXco's headquarters in Escondido, Calif.
The site is in a BLM solar study area, she said, and enXco is "hopeful
the study reduces the permitting time frame for this and any other
future projects" on BLM land.
Vic Kolenc may be reached at vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; 546-6421.
Federal study
--The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is doing a study of environmental
impacts tied to development of utility-scale solar plants on federal
land in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah.
--The study was expanded in June to include in-depth evaluations of 24
tracts of BLM land in the six states.
--It will determine whether the 24 areas are suitable for solar project
development and can become solar energy zones, where environmental
permitting processes would be quicker.
--New Mexico has three solar study areas with 121,459 acres.
--The areas are Afton, just south of Las Cruces, 55,810 acres; Mason
Draw, between Dona Ana and Las Cruces, 17,984 acres; and Red Sand, just
south of Alamogordo, 47,666 acres.
--A draft Environmental Impact Statement for the study is expected by
next summer.
--The BLM has extended the public comment period for the study to Sept.
14. Comments can be made through the BLM's Web site:
www.solareis.anl.gov/index.cfm
(c) 2009,
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
|