New Mexico Customers Sweep Up Wind Energy

Three weeks after the ribbon cutting, a wind farm in New Mexico has signed up 780 residential and 18 commercial accounts, nearly reaching what it hoped to achieve in three months.

Whole Foods Market in Santa Fe is the first and, so far, only business in town to sign up for Public Service Company of New Mexico’s Sky Blue wind-energy program.

By BOB QUICK | The New Mexican In HeadwatersNews.org

"It’s what we stand for," said Tim Lenihan, the store’s team leader, or manager. "It’s what we’re all about. It’s an awesome program PNM has going, and one of my assistant managers has been talking about it with PNM over the course of the last year."

The store purchases half the electricity used at its Cerrillos Road store from the power generated at PNM’s New Mexico Wind Energy Center, located on the windy eastern side of the state.

The wind center consists of 136 turbines that can produce up to 200 megawatts of power, enough for 94,000 average-size homes.

PNM dedicated the wind center Oct. 1, although the company has been producing power for the past few months, PNM spokesman Don Brown said.

The power company’s initial goal was to sign up 850 residential customers and 20 commercial Sky Blue customers by the end of the year. Three weeks into the program, the utility has 780 residential and 18 commercial accounts statewide, Brown said. He didn’t know the number of Santa Fe residential customers who have joined the program.

Whole Foods pays about 10 percent more for wind-generated electricity than it normally would for power produced by natural gas or coal-burning generators.

"We will absorb that cost by being a little more efficient and reducing some of our expenses," Lenihan said. "It’s not a tremendous amount. We’re willing to take a little bit less on our bottom line."

The Whole Foods store in Albuquerque is also participating in the program.

Businesses and residents who participate pay more for the wind-generated electricity because it costs more to produce.

All of the power produced at the wind center goes into PNM’s electric grid and is distributed statewide. PNM explains that the grid can be compared to a pool fed by different sources. Sky Blue electricity results in a "cleaner pool," the company explains.

In the next several years, PNM hopes to have 5 percent of its electric customers — or about 18,000 — using renewable energy, Brown said.

Most electric utilities around the country never go over 1 or 2 percent participation, he said.

Home and small-business customers can participate in different ways, either by purchasing blocks of 100 kilowatt hours or subscribing for 90 percent of monthly consumption.

Commercial and large-business customers can purchase from 1 to 90 percent of monthly usage.

Among the businesses considering joining Sky Blue is The Santa Fe New Mexican.

"We are interested and want to take a look at the program," said the newspaper’s general manager, Ty Ransdell. "But we need to know more about it. I’ve got a meeting set up with them next week to do that."

Reader Comments

Posted: Thursday, October 23, 2003
by: George Henke

Charging more for "clean" power seems counterproductive. The state should look into this in order to find ways of achieving price parity between "clean" and "dirty" power sources, either by providing tax incentives for producing "clean" power or by higher taxes on "dirty" power. This would create the right
economic environment to protect our natural environment.

Posted: Thursday, October 23, 2003
by: Eric Scott

A+

Posted: Thursday, October 23, 2003
by: Mark Wright

We sell wind turbine power up in Kansas thru FLP. Same type of setup is used here on the 136 turbines. How come PNM is charging a 10 point premium to consumer’s here? 3 cents per KW at the millhead in KS cash flows great for everyone there. Seems to Me it would here too. As far as these "Green Fees" You all seem to have..this wind power is cheaper to produce than natural gas or coal turbine power. So are the "Green Fees" then actually subsidizing the Oil companies? It sure appears so.

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=7&ArticleID=34515