PRC Chairman Ben Lujan Encourages Increasing the Renewable Energy Standard and adding a Solar Carve Out
In response to filings of renewable energy procurement plans for the New Mexico Renewable Energy Standard on Sept. 1, 2005 by New Mexico utilities, PRC Chairman Ben Ray Lujan has encouraged utilities to consider whether the Standard should be extended such that it increases to 20% renewable energy by 2020, instead of only 10% by 2011 as it currently stands, and that he believes the Standard should also include a 20% carve out for solar energy (such that 20% of the 20% renewables would come from solar).
CCAE believes that these actions may be exactly what's needed to achieve really significant solar generation, that is, in the tens-of-megawatts scale, in New Mexico. Currently, only PNM has filed for solar program (for customer owned solar). CCAE envisions a day when the customer-owned program leads to significant distributed solar generation in the State, which is complemented by a significant amount of concentrating solar power generation. The latter can easily incorporate energy storage, which makes it especially attractive for offsetting base load conventional generation. Distributed (customer owned) solar, on the other hand, has many benefits to the grid, such as reduced load on transmission lines, substation equipment, etc, and storage options for it are likely to appear in a decade or so. These two classes of solar technologies together, if combined in the right way, could produce significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and produce a more reliable power grid, in an economically optimal way.
