New Mexico’s biggest wind farm commences
The Sagamore project will cover 100,000 acres
PORTALES — By the end of 2020, Roosevelt County is expected to be home to New Mexico’s largest wind farm.
Sagamore Wind Farm officially broke ground last week and Xcel Energy spent an hour explaining the process of constructing a wind farm of this scale to community members attending the Roosevelt County Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
The project, east of Dora, will cost an estimated $900 million and provide $131.5 million in state and local benefits, as well as $43 million in gross receipts tax, said Xcel Project Manager Brian Hudson.
“This project has been going on for three years publicly and even longer behind the scenes,” Hudson said. “It was touch and go for a long time. We had to arrange an interconnect agreement with the southwest power pool and that process is supposed to take nine months, but will take three years at the end of the day.
“I’ve been told this only had a 10 percent chance of going through about six months ago, but three months ago we were ready to pull the trigger and go forward with it.”
The 100,000-acre wind farm will be home to 240 turbines. The facilities are designed to supply power to roughly 194,000 averagesize homes for the next 25 to 30 years.
The construction project is headed by Wanzek Construction and will employ over 400 workers over the year. Once the project is complete, officials expect there will be 20 to 30 full-time employees manning the site.
The turbines are provided by Vestas, a Danish company that provides wind turbines globally. Each turbine is 470 feet tall from the base of the tower to the tip of the wind blade. Each blade is over 200 feet long, while the tower is roughly 300 feet. Technicians need to climb a single contiguous ladder to reach the top, but each tower is equipped with a climb assist system to help with the climb.
The foundations for each tower require 390 yards of concrete poured over rebar. For all 240 towers, Xcel estimates it will need 700 tons of concrete and 25 tons of rebar.
To transport components and equipment, Xcel will need to create 70 miles of access road on the wind farm and has entered an agreement with Roosevelt County to help maintain the roads used to transport materials to the site, which will need to be altered and maintained to handle the increased traffic and large loads.
There will be over 3 million feet of cable laid throughout the project connecting the towers to two substations that up the voltage to send to the main power grid.
Ongoing updates on the project can be found online at: xcelenergy.com/sagamore.