Kit Carson Electric plans to use ARPA funds for solar
Co-op CEO says investment in solar batteries ‘will start to pay off ’
Luis Reyes, chief executive officer of Kit Carson Electric Co-op (KCEC), has been working with his team for over 10 years to establish a practical solution to power interruptions. “If we’re going to have more extreme weather as a result of climate change, let’s not argue,” he said. “Let’s build a better system to address it.”
Many Taosenõs will recall Dec. 15, 2021 as the day they lost electric power for hours or even days in a county-wide blackout caused by a powerhouse windstorm that triggered 45 tornadoes across the midwest. This derecho serial, often called an “inland hurricane,” lashed Taos with an inch of hail in some places, explosions of thunder and bolts of lighting that lit up the whole sky. Savage winds of up to 103 miles an hour damaged not only roofs and houses in Taos Valley but snapped and uprooted over 6,000 mature pine trees and stripped the aspens to bare poles in Enchanted Forest Cross Country Ski Area at Bobcat Pass and around Kachina basin at Taos Ski Valley.
This violent storm, which brought down at least twenty utility poles and caused blackouts from Costilla to Ranchos de Taos, cost KCEC a million dollars. “That’s the price of one electric storage battery,” Reyes said. “Three to five million dollars spent on solar batteries will start to pay off.”
Sealed electric batteries that store energy for nighttime use are the final step in consolidating and securing the solar grid, Reyes says. The electric co-op will need a total of about fifty solar batteries. Right now Reyes has grant writers working on a proposal requesting funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
Adapting the grid to green energy has been a long-term project at KCEC. According to KCEC’s website, 20 years ago, in 2002, they began to implement solar energy for the electrical distribution grid that serves Taos, Rio Arriba and Colfax counties. In 2010 KCEC’s members voted to set a goal of 100 percent renewable energy for the Co-op. “You have to be bold in these plans,” Reyes said.
The team wrote grants, acquired partners and has already installed solar arrays in outlying rural communities all over Taos County. The arrays are different sizes, from modest (like the parking lot roof of KCEC) to a field-sized array at University of New Mexico-Taos. By day, these arrays are feeding solar energy into the grid. KCEC members can choose to have up to 100 percent of their power come from clean green energy.
After much discussion and public input, in 2016 KCEC decided to leave Tri-State Generation and Transmission, which limited solar generation to only five percent. By 2017 KCEC had bought out of its contract with Tri-State, and 100 percent solar energy became a practical and achievable goal.
For the next five years the co-op installed micro-grids — 14 solar arrays from Ojo Caliente to Amalia, Picuris and Peñasco, from Questa to Angel Fire and Eagle Nest — and is planning to build more in Taos, Reyes said. In the future this Green Energy Corridor will hopefully become resilient and selfreliant. When rural electric power is lost to rolling blackouts, forest fires or gas shortages such as the ones Texas has experienced, Reyes says KCEC will then be able to cut off the failed stretch of line and reroute solar power.
Other communities across the nation have found solar energy to be highly efficient. Florida Power & Light customers saved money by adding a 10 MW/40 Mwh battery to its existing 74.5 MW at Babcock Ranch Solar Energy Center, creating what they claim to be the largest solar-plus-storage installation in the United States. Florida solar plants are expected to produce a net savings of $40 million, partly by saving fuel. Solar storage batteries are a way to boost renewable output and build an incredible amount of solar power cost-effectively, their website says.
A sizable portion of ARPA funding is coming soon to Taos. Kit Carson Electric is part of the consortium of a Taos Ski Valley proposal for a Clean Energy Transmission Corridor proposal, which includes the installation of EV stations at TSV.
Reyes said, “We have 20 to 30 EV chargers already installed all over the county in an effort to get gas-burning cars—which contribute to the greenhouse effect—off the road.” They are planning to install back-up storage batteries at Taos Ski Valley and upgrade solar infrastructure at Holy Cross Medical Center as well, Reyes said.
He explained that a third of the $155 million that is coming from ARPA could provide solar storage batteries for the whole county so that during the next power-related catastrophe no one would be left in the dark.