Saguache County commissioners will host an informal meeting in Center Sept. 14 regarding a proposed solar project. SolarReserve, a California company, hopes to build a pair of 100-megawatt solar plants on roughly 3,000 acres northeast of Center in the San Luis Valley and needs to secure the county's approval.

Read why Virginia Sutherland, a second generation rancher in her 80's, feels that Tessera Solar (or anything similar) must not be allowed to be built in the San Luis Valley!

Jigar Shah, the Founder of SunEdison, chimes in about a Denver Post op-ed that claims that because of "uncertainties involved in Xcel's attempt to expand solar power generation, now isn't the time to press forward" and Shah says the Post screwed up again.

County commissioners signed off on permitting for a 30-megawatt solar plant Wednesday, marking the latest in a wave of projects to pass through the county. NextEra Energy hopes to build the plant on 279 acres at the north end of the county four miles west of Colorado 17, near the intersection of county roads 9 North and 105. NextEra Energy hopes to build the plant on 279 acres at the north end of the county four miles west of Colorado 17, near the intersection of county roads 9 North and 105. The Florida-based company still would need to find a buyer for its power.

Colorado could soon be home to the largest concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) solar farms in the world. A 30-megawatt solar plant in the works would cover approximately 225 acres of the San Luis Valley in Colorado on land adjacent to transmission facilities owned by the electricity utility, Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCo).

Charlotte-based Cogentrix Energy LLC said Monday it will build the largest solar farm of its kind in Colorado. It will produce enough electricity to power about 6,500 homes. The project will use concentrating photovoltaic technology that uses optical lenses to magnify sunlight onto high-efficiency solar cells, allowing the system to produce more energy per acre than other technologies. Cogentrix says the CPV system to be supplied by Amonix Inc. will be the largest of its type in the world. Work will start in early 2011 and be completed on the 225-acre site in Colorado's sunny, high-altitude San Luis Valley in the second quarter of 2012.

Concentrated photovoltaic power uses lenses to magnify light onto a small cell with three layers of light-transforming material instead of one. The technology costs more than traditional silicon-based solar cells but delivers better efficiency, proponents say.

A California company hopes to build a 100-megawatt solar plant in the southeastern corner of Saguache County. SolarReserve submitted a preliminary land use application to the county last month and a company official briefed commissioners on the project Tuesday. The company hopes to build the plant on 1,700 acres roughly six miles northeast of Center near the intersection of county roads G and 53.

It’s official! Tessera Solar North America announced the submittal of an official application to Saguache County for the first concentrated solar project in the San Luis Valley. Others are rumored to be close on its heels. Until the application is deemed to be “complete” and is officially “accepted” by Commissioners, citizens are not allowed to make any comments or ask any questions.

In a surprise decision today, the Colorado Public Utility Commission reopened the docket for public comment on Xcel/PSCo-TriState's proposed new 120-mile, $.5 Billion Calumet-Comanche-San Luis Valley 230kV Transmission Line.

The Denver Post's editorial was disappointing in its failure to support infrastructure vital to economic growth in rural communities and was remiss to not address reliability as a key driver for developing new transmission infrastructure in southern Colorado.

Read more...

The company proposing the largest solar plant in the San Luis Valley submitted its final permit application to Saguache County commissioners Tuesday. Tessera Solar is proposing to build a 200-megawatt plant on 1,526 acres that would sit roughly eight miles southeast of Saguache.

A Florida-based company became the fourth solar developer this year to apply for a permit from Alamosa County. NextEra Energy Resources unveiled its proposal for a 30-megawatt solar photovoltaic plant in the northwest corner of the county Tuesday.

"There are many new energy projects that are moving ahead without confronting major hurdles," said Todd Hartman, spokesman at the Colorado Governor's Energy Office. Still, despite the dreamy goals for new energy and green jobs, the impact of arrested approval and local resistance is evident. Xcel this month asked the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to permit it to cut already-approved solar energy plans by almost half, citing the difficulty in erecting new power-transmission lines out of the San Luis Valley, where the state's largest network of solar arrays generates enough electricity for about 50,000 homes.

lamosa County Commission Chairman Darius Allen envisioned the San Luis Valley as the solar capital of the world to participants in an energy forum Thursday.

Louis M. Bacon sounds off about The Pueblo Chieftain’s editorial of June 13 regarding Trinchera Ranch’s opposition to the proposed transmission line and its effects on the San Luis Valley. According to Bacon, the article is "misinformed and just plain wrong."

Alamosa County commissioners gave their conditional approval Wednesday for a midsized solar plant at the north end of the county. North Carolina-based Cogentrix Solar Services hopes to begin construction on the $140 million, 30-megawatt plant next spring, pending on the negotiation of a power purchase agreement with Xcel Energy and the completion of an environmental review with the U.S. Department of Energy.

Gov. Bill Ritter said Tuesday he hopes to sit down with all sides and find a resolution to the dispute over a proposed transmission line from Pueblo to the San Luis Valley.

At the end of the day, the San Luis Valley is really the loser if we don't find the path forward to maximize the potential for solar in this valley. There just has to be a win-win solution in here.

Xcel Energy announced Friday it will cut its solar development plans by at least half, if not more, because of uncertainties over the in-service date for a new transmission line out of the San Luis Valley. Xcel Energy, threw up its hands and said the delays in building the line – which it blamed on the billionaire, Louis Moore Bacon, and his team of lawyers – had potentially derailed the plans for big-time solar in the valley and that it was rethinking its resource allocations in meeting the renewable energy law.

Who has power in the high, sunny expanse of southern Colorado’s rural San Luis Valley? It’s something of a trick question, complicated by the many shades of meaning that the word “power” conveys – from electrical to political to financial. And the story of the valley and its wrestling match/debate over a big power line project encompasses them all. "We hope today's decision by (Xcel) enables the utilities to take a step back and study the many feasible transmission line alternatives in a thorough manner," said Cody Wertz, a spokesman for Trinchera, who said the utilities can already handle the needed capacity. We believe there are better, less impactful and cheaper ways to build transmission than the utilities are proposing," he said

Photo: Michael Benanav for The New York Times

The nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, as oil spews unchecked from BP’s wrecked well, makes this high mountain valley seem even more idyllic than it is. Energy here, from the sun, is free, abundant and clean. For generations of farmers, and the hippies in the 1970s who went off the grid with their sun-powered water-heaters, and most recently the large-scale solar companies that have come looking for a new kind of harvest in one of the nation’s sweet spots for renewable energy, the sun is an anchor of life. But perhaps nothing is simple or easy in energy, and the bitter fight over solar’s future here in south-central Colorado is providing an object lesson that the path to a new energy future will not be without its own messy entanglements of politics, power and place.

Residents support solar, but are wary of centralized, large-scale photovoltaic arrays in the rural valley; Small-scale solar projects near existing sub-stations make more sense, conservation groups say. Read more...