New Mexico has huge potential to produce electricity from renewable sources but a small window to develop transmission lines to deliver that power to customers, a lawmaker said Tuesday after listening to a report on the issue.
The state Renewable Energy Transmission Authority presented its first statewide transmission report to an interim legislative committee. It covers everything from existing transmission lines, barriers to building additional lines and hot spots for electricity generation using wind, solar radiation and geothermal sources.
“The issue is transmission. If we don’t have any more transmission, there will be no more renewable projects in the state of New Mexico and that is critical for our future. It’s a multibillion-dollar opportunity,” said Rep. Jose Campos, D-Santa Rosa.
The state will lose out to other states if it doesn’t do something in the next three to four years, he said.
Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas, North Dakota and South Dakota already have established transmission authorities, and Colorado has prepared a renewable energy transmission report, said Jeremy Turner, RETA executive director. Neighboring Texas has been working for the last few years to identify its clean and renewable energy zones.
Greg Miller, the lead director of engineering and operations for Public Service Co. of New Mexico, a subsidiary of PNM Resources Inc. and the state’s largest utility, said RETA’s report goes a long way to spell out some of the barriers utilities and others have when it comes to transmission.
Those include cumbersome federal procedures for connecting to the grid and a general lack of transmission lines for exporting electricity from New Mexico, he said. (AP)
