Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

EL PASO -- 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.