Xcel Energy has started construction on a 522-MW, $900 million wind farm project in New Mexico a week after announcing the construction startup of 200-mile transmission and distribution lines in its Texas-New Mexico service area.
One of the new transmission lines will serve New Mexico's bustling oil and gas exploration area in the southern portion of the state.
The new Sagamore Wind facility is being built near Dora, in Roosevelt County, which is south of Portales, New Mexico, and west of Lubbock, Texas. The facility is expected to become operational in "the latter part of 2020," Excel said. The facility is to supply electricity customers in New Mexico and Texas.
"About 20 percent of a typical residential bill for Xcel Energy customers in the region is made up of fuel charges that cover the cost of coal and natural gas that fuel area power plants," Xcel said in a September 16 statement. "Sagamore will use the free and abundant wind as a fuel source, reducing fuel costs to our customers."
PACKAGE OF WIND INVESTMENTS
Sagamore is the final project in a package of wind energy investments announced in March 2017 for a total of 1,230 MW of wind.
Invenergy developed Sagamore before entering into an agreement with Xcel Energy in 2017 for Xcel Energy to acquire the project and erect 240 Vestas turbines.
Xcel commissioned in June the 478-MW Hale Wind Project north of Lubbock in Hale County, Texas. Both the Hale and Sagamore facilities are owned by Xcel Energy, the first two wind facilities built and owned by the company in its Texas-New Mexico region.
Xcel has already begun the purchase of 230-MW of wind energy under a 30-year PPA with two wind farms located in West Texas and owned by NextEra Energy Resources.
REGIONAL OIL AND GAS EXPANSION
In a December 11 release, Xcel said that nearly 200 miles of new transmission and distribution lines have been completed this year in an upgrade and expansion project for portions of its New Mexico and Texas transmission system "in order to meet growing demand for new generation."
Xcel said it began construction in December on a 34-mile, 345-kilovolt line from the Eddy County Interchange, about 9.5 miles east-southeast of Artesia, New Mexico, to the Kiowa Interchange, about 19 miles northeast of Carlsbad.
The $65 million line will create "additional capacity for electric load growth in the area, much of it due to oil and gas expansion," the company said.
It noted projections by the US Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration that "more than 300 million barrels of crude oil will be produced in New Mexico in 2019," which will help rank the state as the third-largest oil producer behind Texas and North Dakota.
Xcel said it built nearly 100 miles of new transmission and another 100 miles of distribution in 2019 in southeast New Mexico.
It said that in 2020, "more than 100 miles of additional line and nearly 300 miles of new distribution line will be built in the region."
