Four utilities partner on major solar project - New Mexico Business Weekly:

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, , the and together issued a reques for proposals to find developers for the construction of a solarf parabolic trough generation facility to providwe solar electricity to each of the utilities by according to a release issued late The requirements in the RFP include locating the plant inNew Mexico, storage of thermal energyg generated through solar parabolic trough technologg and the ability to delived between 211,000 and 375,000 megawatt-hours per That's enough to power between 29,000 and 52,000 averagee New Mexico homes. (A "megawatt means one megawatt acting over a periocd ofone hour.
A megawatt measures the capacityy of an electric generator and a megawatt hour measures the actuapl amount of electricity it produces over a certain periodof time.) The RFP came out of a feasibility study commissioned by the utilities last year and conductes by the Electric Power Research Institute. It foundd that the most feasible solar technology currently availablse fora large-scale New Mexico plant is the parabolic Solar trough technology relies on curved parabolicx mirrors lined up in rows. The mirrord concentrate heat onto oil-filled tubes, which then generatr steam.
That turns a generator and produces If the technology is combinex withthermal storage, the systems can even generate electricity at night and during cloudy periods. If a viable projec emerges from theRFP process, utility partners expect to have a contracg negotiated by the end of 2008 and a projecf could come online by the end of 2011. A mandatde from the Public Regulation Commission requires utilitie s to derive at least 20 percent of their renewabled energy from solarby 2011. The state'sa renewable portfolio standard requires utilities to derivwe 20 percent of their electricity from clea sourcesby 2020.
Rural cooperatives must derivew at least 10 percent of their electricity from cleanj energy sourcesby 2020. El Paso Electric (NYSE: EE) is a regionall electric utilityproviding generation, transmission and distributiohn service to 357,000 retailk and wholesale customers in west Texas and southern New Mexico. Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL) is a large electricity and natural gas companyh operating in eight Westerm and Midwestern stateswith 3.3 million electricity customers and 1.8 million natural gas customers.
PNM is a subsidiary of (NYSE: PNM), an energh holding company based in It provides electric utility serviceto 487,000 customers and natural gas service to 492,000 customers in New It also sells power on the wholesald market. Tri-State Generation & Transmission is basesd in Denver and is the wholesale supplier to 12 membeer electric cooperatives inNew Mexico, 18 in eight in Wyoming and six in Nebraska, which in turn provide electricityh to about 1.4 million consumers.