Kit Carson Electric embracing solar

Utility makes deal with Picuris Pueblo to have first of seven new arrays

TAOS — Picuris Pueblo and Kit Carson Electric Cooperative celebrated a groundbreaking recently for a 1-megawatt solar array on the pueblo’s land in Taos County, the first of seven such arrays the rural electric cooperative plans to build in its three-county service area over the next year. And it’s part of an ambitious long-range plan by the Kit Carson board to eventually generate all of the electricity it provides to consumers from local, renewable sources.

The cooperative already has built seven solar arrays around Taos County and has been working on its solar power plan for more than a decade. The plan required the cooperative to break a contract with power provider Tri-State Generation & Transmission, which launched a long legal battle and an agreement to pay $37 million to the company as part of the separation deal.

But Luis Reyes, Kit Carson’s longtime chief executive officer, and Kit Carson Trustee Bobby Ortega defended the settlement, saying the old contract would have cost more and was blocking the cooperative’s plans to go solar. Tri-State limited the amount of renewable energy its members could tap into.

If Kit Carson hadn’t fought to get out of its contract, it would have been limited by the energy provider to old energy sources “in a world that’s rapidly changing,” Ortega said.

The cooperative reached an agreement with Guzman Renewable Energy Partners, a subsidiary of Florida-based Guzman Energy, in June 2016 to provide power to its 30,000 members. The company is helping Kit Carson with the solar buildout and is responsible for ensuring there is power available for customers when the sun isn’t shining.

“We made it clear from the beginning that we wanted to be a new type of energy provider and not fight things that are objectively good for the community, like renewable energy,” said Chris Riley, who co-founded Guzman Energy.

“This is far and away the most ambitious energy rollout of a rural cooperative anywhere,” Riley added in reference to Kit Carson’s plans to build 35 solar arrays total in the next five years.

“You almost have to take a step back where Luis and the board took a very courageous step and said, ‘We are going to break with the old and we are going to seek out more economical sources of energy.’ They are the first and thus far only rural co-op to break with the traditional supplier,” added Leopoldo E. Guzman, founder and CEO of the Guzman Energy.

In the last half-dozen years, the cost of solar energy has dropped dramatically, thanks in part to cheap Chinese-built solar panels driving down the costs of the system. The price drop made solar more competitive with the cost of power generated from coal and nuclear.

Ortega and Reyes said placing the solar arrays at locations scattered around the service area does several things. Placing the arrays near existing power lines in small communities makes it easier and cheaper to tie into the electric grid. In addition, it maximizes the power generated from the arrays overall. “If all the arrays were lumped in one place, then cloud cover would make them all ineffective. This way, if arrays are shaded in one area, they might not be in another,” Reyes said.

In addition, placing the arrays in local communities helps the cooperative’s members feel like participants. “It’s a cooperative. Every community should feel like it has ownership of its own array,” Ortega said.

Each solar array will cost about $2 million, according to Reyes. While that makes the whole project a minimum $70 million endeavor, Kit Carson officials and Guzman believe it will stabilize electricity prices for customers in the long run. Ortega and Reyes say the power agreement with Guzman is expected to save co-op members more than $50 million over the next decade.

This story first appeared in The Taos News, a sister publication of The Santa Fe New Mexican.