New Solar Photovoltaic Power Facilities Planned For Colorado & New Mexico

New CO & NM Solar PV Plants Have Small Power Output Compared With Solar Thermal Plants

Xcel/SunPower Solar PV Project in Southern Colorado

Xcel Energy of Minneapolis, Minnesota and SunPower Corporation of San Jose, California on April 7, 2009 announced an agreement to build a 17-megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant near Alamosa, Colorado. The facility will use Sunpower® Tracker systems that generate up to more than 30 percent more energy per land area than conventional systems.

The new solar PV power is an expansion of the existing 8.24-megawatt (MW) Xcel/SunEdison solar PV power plant located west of Colorado State Highway 17 about one mile north of Mosca, Colorado. See the post of March 26, 2009 below for photographs of the existing Xcel/SunEdison facility's solar PV heliostats and panel arrays.

In the announcement, SunPower CEO Tom Werner says, “Today, high-efficiency solar PV technology is competitively proceed for power plant applications. It’s fast to install, and reliably delivers clean power, particularly during peak demand hours.”




SunPower Trackers are arrays of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels mounted on axles aligned in a north-south orientation. The panels rotate on the axles allowing the panels to track the sun from east to west throughout daylight hours.

Cimarrón I Solar Project in Northern New Mexico

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association of Westminster, Colorado, and First Solar of Tempe, Arizona, on March 24, 2009 announced an agreement to build a 30-megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant between Cimarrón and Springer, New Mexico. Click on the box below to bring up and enlarge an artist's depiction of the solar PV facility.


Cimarrón I Solar Project Visualization Still Frame 3. The view is from east to west on the high plains of New Mexico just northwest of Springer, NM and west of U.S Interstate Highway 25. The eastern foothills and peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are on the horizon, and include snow-covered Baldy Mountain in the upper right which is on Philmont Scout Ranch property. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association provides outstanding visualizations, animations, and still photographs of the site.

The Cimarrón I Solar Project will use 500,000 (five hundred thousand) solar PV panels, each 2 (two) by 4 (four) feet, installed on 250 (two hundred fifty) acres of land. Construction is to begin in April 2010, and the first part of the system should be producing power by August 2010. Click on the box below to bring up and enlarge an artist's depiction of the solar PV facility.


Cimarrón I Solar Project Visualization Still Frame 6. The view is from west to east on the high plains of New Mexico east of Cimarrón and northwest of Springer. The hills south of Raton, NM are on the horizon, the tallest of which is Laughlin Peak which is about 20 miles southeast of Raton. Note the transmission facilities in the foreground. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association provides outstanding visualizations, animations, and still photographs of the site.

Solar Photovoltaic & Concentrating Solar Power Production Numbers In Perspective

The announcements for the two solar PV power plants indicate they are among the largest of their type in the world. Although these projects may indeed be large in comparison with other power plants relying exclusively on solar photovoltaic panels, the two NM and CO facilities together will produce only about 47 (forty-seven) megawatts (MW) of power. This amounts to about 13 (thirteen) percent of the power now being generated, for example, by the 354-megawatt (three hundred fifty-four MW) concentrating solar thermal power (CSTP or CSP) facilities at Kramer Junction, Harper Lake and Daggett, California.

The facilities at Daggett, Kramer Junction, and Harper Lake, CA were built from 1984 through 1990 and are known as Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) I through IX. The nine SEGS concentrating solar power plants generate from 14 (fourteen) to 80 (eighty) megawatts (MW) of power. The SEGS solar thermal power plants have operated continuously and have been commercially successful for the past 20 to 25 years.

The Solar Electric Industries Association (SEIA) in its US Solar Industry Year in Review 2008 report notes that no new concentrating solar thermal power (CSTP or CSP) plants came online in the USA in 2008. However, CSTP/CSP projects in the planning or construction stages currently total more than six gigawatts (GW; 6 GW = 6,000 megawatts).

Among these are projects planned for California's Mojave Desert, Arizona and Florida. The Arizona projects include the Abengoa 280-megawatt (MW) solar CSTP/CSP plant near Gila Bend, AZ, and the Albasia 200-MW Solar CSTP/CSP plant near Kingman, AZ.

Xcel Energy also issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) on January 9, 2009 for installing 600 (six hundred) megawatts (MW) of solar CSTP/CSP in southern Colorado.

The Xcel/SunPower and Tri-State/First Solar PV power plants and other similar plants of relatively small electrical output produce power appropriate for a portion of local demand. The Tri-State/First Solar PV plant output is estimated to serve about 9,000 residences, for example. Such plants could serve as models for distributed generation (DG) solar PV power with short transmission distances that could be installed almost anywhere in the USA or the world where the sun shines.