By Megan Gleason, Albuquerque Journal
Amid slow movement in getting New Mexico’s community solar program running, the State Land Office has decided to take it up on its own.
On Tuesday, the State Land Office announced it executed a long-term lease earlier this month with Affordable Solar for the first-ever creation of a community solar project on state land.
The planned solar array will take up nearly 80 acres of state land in Valencia County and should generate about 5 megawatts of solar energy annually at maximum capacity.
That’s enough to power around 1,000 homes in a year for customers of the Public Service Company of New Mexico, per estimates by the State Land Office.
Dylan Connelly, director of commercial and community solar at Affordable Solar, told the Journal his company expects to begin construction in the first quarter of 2025. He also said Affordable Solar hopes to begin outreach efforts to get people signed up for the community solar program in the next few months.
Connelly said the State Land Office’s support “is helping us bring renewable energy to underserved and low-income communities, and we’re excited about what this project will accomplish.”
The announcement comes after numerous delays with a community solar program that lawmakers approved in 2021 with the Community Solar Act.
It took months of back-and-forth with the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission and investor-owned utilities — mandated by law to participate in the program — on how community solar would work, working through alleged technical errors in the process of choosing solar developers and attempts to solve an outstanding issue of $120 million needed for power grid upgrades — though recently announced federal dollars will help with that.
The debate over the community solar rollout even made it to the New Mexico Supreme Court, with the state’s three investor-owned utilities — PNM, El Paso Electric and Southwestern Public Service Co. — arguing about how billing under the program should work. The court ultimately upheld the PRC’s rules on billing.
Tuesday’s State Land Office lease announcement aims to expand community solar access alongside the programs that will come with the Community Solar Act.
The State Land Office plans to hold 10 more community solar auctions in the next few months, according to a news release from the state agency.
Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard said in a statement this is proof that state lands can be utilized to help meet New Mexicans’ needs. At the same time, the Affordable Solar project alone is expected to generate $2.7 million for the state’s public schools over the lifetime of the lease, according to the State Land Office.
The state so far has 13 active long-term solar leases adding up to nearly 400 megawatts in total capacity, excluding the new one with Affordable Solar.
“This is a historic moment in New Mexico’s renewable energy journey,” Garcia Richard said.
The PRC announced in August that nine community solar projects finalized interconnection agreements with utilities, allowing solar developers the ability to transmit energy from farms to homes later on.
“Having these signed interconnection agreements in place is exciting news and moves us closer to seeing this valuable program come online,” PRC Chief of Staff Cholla Khoury said then in a statement. “Keeping this momentum going is essential to providing more New Mexicans with access to solar generation.”
About a quarter of the projects have interconnection agreements, a PRC spokesperson said. No customers are yet signed up for the program.
This article originally appeared in the Albuquerque Journal.