My View: User-Owned Solar is State’s Best Power
By NED SUDBOROUGH
It is our turn to decide whether solar energy in New Mexico will be primarily on-site collection and use, or central collection and distribution before use. This decision should not be quietly defaulted to the Public Service Company of New Mexico.
The decision for on-site energy or power-line energy should be made — consciously, conspicuously — through the New Mexico Legislature. The House, Senate and governor are capable of establishing a billion-dollar fund to place photo-voltaic energy collectors on the premises of property owners who want them. Establishing a guaranteed market of New Mexico’s size would bring companies and jobs and tax money and develop practical expertise to match the technical expertise of Sandia National Laboratories, developer of the solar cell.
On-site collection and use of energy is efficient; off-site transmission of energy is not. The loss of power in power lines means more plants and lines are necessary. The recent objection to new power lines along Airport Road and the long struggle against power lines crossing the Jemez Mountains in Santa Fe National Forest by environmentalists express our common interest. PNM tells us that the 22 metal towers, 80-feet-high, rising now a few blocks west of Cerrillos Road are needed for Santa Fe’s growing electricity demand. That demand does not necessarily require more poles, more power lines and more power plants.
A billion-dollar state solar fund would be a public investment, repaid through the electric bills of users. But what about PNM? Power presently generated at Four Corners can be sent to Texas, Utah, Colorado and Arizona, relieving power demands in those states, which would relieve power demands in more distant states.
Think of mid-summer air-conditioner needs in this nation and of New Mexico’s capability to meet them. A solar New Mexico is patriotic.
PNM’s major role for the state would be to back up power when unusual weather diminishes roof-top collection. The grid is also useful for accepting returned photoelectric power. The need for some grid-power to cover uses not amenable to solar solutions will remain.
With a solar fund, we would be borrowing from ourselves to become the first solar state. When businesses of all kinds have repaid the state fund, they will operate at lower costs than businesses out-of- state, and when private citizens have paid for their collectors, their living costs will be lowered. Owners of course will bear the continuing costs of maintenance and updating, and will be motivated by economy to do so.
The future will bring increased energy needs; if we do nothing, it will also bring a Desert Rock coal-fired power plant or a nuclear power plant and more transmission lines and higher rates for electricity. We will pay for these things.
But we can also be free of these things just by paying our monthly electric bills and thereby amortizing our roof-top power sources.
User-owned power supply for New Mexico will be resisted by those whose interests in personal profits or ideologies are greater than their concerns for public problem-solving; their motivations are strong, and they can be expected to try to confound us by putting devils in the details.
But if we recognize that the welfare of individuals and businesses, the welfare of New Mexico and the nation, are best served on individual roof-tops, if we accept that insistent citizen power must precede the best application of solar power, then we should start talking to our spouses, our friends, our neighbors and start contacting our state representatives and senators.
Start telling the governor that owner-owned solar power is what we want.
Ned Sudborough lives
in a passive solar home in Santa Fe. He has been a member of the executive committees of the Santa Fe Group and The Ro Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club.
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