Solar Power Has Bright Future In Santa Teresa

Doa Ana County celebrated the opening of a new solar generating facility in Santa Teresa, N.M.

The new solar facility boasts 190,000 solar panels that should provide around 16,000 homes with electricity on peak sunny days.

“We have sun 363 days out of the year and the location –i t’s big and it’s beautiful and it’s just conductive to what they’re doing,” said Doa Ana County Commissioner Dolores Saldana-Caviness.

Plans for the Santa Theresa solar generating facility that opened on Friday have been in the works since 2008.

“Helping with the production of this type of electricity is that it hardly uses any water so the consumption of water, if not zero, is almost zero,” said Saldana-Caviness.

While environmentally friendly, solar energy can be costly. The vice president of Solar Energy for NRG, Tim Hemig, said successful solar projects will continue to force prices down.

“Solar power plants are a little more expensive than fossil plants today, but in a number of years you’re gonna see that price go down and be very very competitive with more traditional sources like fossil fuels,” said Hemig.

The director of resource planning at El Paso Electric said New Mexico provides tax credits to programs that support renew that support renewable energy, making Doa Ana County an ideal place for this new project. It seems Texas will also get it’s moment in the sun.

“We absolutely plan on building solar facilities in Texas,” said Hemig.

NRG says there’s no contcrete plan for a solar facility in Texas right now, but the director of resource planning at El Paso Electric saif there are solar projects planned in Las Cruces and Chapparral. Their opening is slated for spring 2012.