High-profile hearings on contentious solar facility south of Santa Fe to resume Monday

A winding saga over whether Santa Fe County should permit a utility-scale solar power and battery storage facility south of the city is set to continue soon.

County commissioners will hear Monday and Tuesday an appeal of the county Planning Commission’s approval of a conditional use permit that would allow the controversial facility, known as Rancho Viejo Solar, to be built near Eldorado and Rancho San Marcos, about three miles south of Santa Fe.

It will mark another high-profile chapter in the ongoing land-use dispute that promises to draw over 100 people to the commission chambers, if history holds. As project advocates cite how the facility would be able to generate sufficient power to carry the entire residential load of the city, it is uncharted territory for the Northern New Mexico county government.

Never before has the county had to wrangle with a decision like this about a utility-scale solar facility. But whatever verdict is rendered in the quasi-judicial proceeding by the five-member County Commission can still be appealed in state District Court.

At this stage, that seems likely, as opponents continue to turn out in high numbers to lambast the project, fearing possible effects on their property values. Many characterize the battery storage technology as dangerous and decry what they say is the potential for runaway fires to spread across the desert landscape if battery cells overheat, despite representatives of energy giant AES Corp., the company behind the project, maintaining new technology dramatically reduces risks posed by such facilities.

Lee Zlotoff, who leads an opposition group known as the Clean Energy Coalition of Santa Fe County, said the organization has raised more than $50,000 and is prepared to go to court if the commissioners approve the land use permit. He noted his group is “in this for the long haul.”

“This project is not what it appears to be, and while it may appear to be environmentally safe and clean, it is not safe and it is not clean and it is not good for the environment, period,” Zlotoff said. “And anyone who takes 10 minutes to look at it closely will look at that same understanding.”

The project’s supporters are equally as strident. Proponents say it could play a major role in the state’s efforts to curb climate change.

“Projects like Rancho Viejo are critically important in providing Santa Fe County residents and the region with a safe, reliable, and affordable energy resource for the decades ahead of growing energy needs, while achieving New Mexico’s clean energy goals,” Amy Lobel, a spokesperson for AES, wrote in an email.

Aiming to generate 96 megawatts of power and roughly 45 megawatts of battery storage, the project from the Northern Virgina-based AES would cover 680 acres of a roughly 800-acre parcel and include a solar facility, a 1-acre collector substation, a 3-acre battery storage system and a 2.3-mile generation line about 4 miles east of La Cienega, according to the county’s website.

“We understand that there are some residents in the community who continue to raise strong opinions and concerns about the project,” Lobel wrote in the email. “Unfortunately, many of these concerns are unfounded and have led to more misinformation in local news, particularly regarding the battery energy storage component of the project.”

The occasion promises drama and the type of large crowds seldom associated with county government meetings. If it receives the necessary approvals, the facility would be one of the larger facilities in a state that hopes to cut away at its greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades.

People may be used to heading to the Santa Fe Community Convention Center for these meetings, since that is where past hearings on the solar proposal have been held. But that won’t be the way it goes this week, much to the dismay of project opponents who feel the opposition may not be felt as acutely with overflow rooms.

Opponents plan to protest early next week outside 102 Grant Ave., the county building where the two-day hearing will be held.

The commission chamber has substantially less seating for members of the public than the convention center, where past marathon hearings on the matter have been held, attended by more than 100 people.

State law says all meetings of a county commission need to be held in a public building owned by the state, county or public schools, meaning the hearing cannot be held in the city-owned convention center. By contrast, state statute does not prohibit a planning commission from holding meetings at a city-owned building.

Zlotoff said moving the meeting to a smaller venue showed favoritism.

“I think it just kind of reinforces this attitude that we’ve experienced, which is ‘You, the public, are the enemy, and the AES is the chosen child here,’ ” Zlotoff said.

President Donald Trump has gone on the offensive on a campaign priority: going after clean energy. His administration has tried to withhold federal funding Congress previously approved for climate and clean-energy projects and taken aim at solar and wind projects in general.

Asked about whether AES may have lost tax credit opportunities that had existed under President Joe Biden’s administration, Lobel said there are no proposed changes for Rancho Viejo Solar.

“Locally, AES plans to apply for an Industrial Revenue Bond through Santa Fe County,” Lobel wrote in an email. “Nearly all significant capital projects in New Mexico obtain IRBs as common practice. They do not necessitate public financing of the subject project, instead their primary value is in negotiating upfront what the property tax payments will be over the life time of the project to allow for certainty in project budgeting.”

Rancho Viejo Solar is a private project, financed by AES and a consortium of bank lenders and tax equity investors, Joshua Mayer, senior development manager for AES, has said previously. The target customer for the project is Public Service Company of New Mexico, the state’s largest electric utility.

But if federal policy has shifted, New Mexico’s priorities have not wavered.

New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act, passed in 2019, lays out an ambitious timeline of renewable energy goals for the state’s power grid, requiring electric utilities to generate 50% of their power from renewable sources by 2030 and 80% by 2040. Investor-owned utilities must reach 100% renewable sources by 2045 and rural electric cooperatives by 2050.

Santa Fe Green Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Glenn Schiffbauer, 350SantaFe.org President Robert Cordingley and John Buchser, chair of the Northern Group of the Sierra Club’s Rio Grande Chapter, wrote in a op-ed published in The New Mexican late last year there are numerous reasons to support Rancho Viejo Solar. Among them: low-cost renewable energy, economic benefits and environmental stewardship.

“The project will mean direct reinvestment in the community and enhance public services like schools, libraries and emergency response by delivering significant economic benefit through generating an estimated $10 million in tax revenue and $4 million in gross receipts taxes over the life of the project, and creating more than 200 jobs during peak construction,” Lobel wrote in an email.

The threat of wildfires in Northern New Mexico is always of foremost concern, and project opponents have cast doubt on whether the county has the ability to respond effectively to a fire at the facility. AES and supporters say battery storage has undergone an evolution in recent years, becoming safer through intensified testing standards and technological advancements. According to the American Clean Power Association, no deaths have resulted from incidents at energy storage facilities in the United States.

AES would have to provide facility-specific training to the Santa Fe County Fire Department, county spokesperson Olivia Romo wrote in an email.

“The County has adopted the 2021 International Fire Code (IFC) as well as NFPA 855 2023 edition and will continue to stay abreast of any updates to the codes and standards applicable to battery energy storage systems,” she wrote.

Zlotoff disagrees with the notion the county is prepared.

“I know the county is not equipped to deal with something like this,” he said. “They don’t have the personnel. They don’t have the right equipment. … At this moment, they are not really prepared to deal with a problem like this.”

A blaze that smoldered for days after it sparked early this year at a solar battery storage plant in Northern California has ignited fresh debate in Santa Fe County over Rancho Viejo Solar.

Residents of Eldorado, Rancho San Marcos and other nearby communities who oppose the development say the fire, which shook up the relatively young battery storage industry, reinforces their central argument: Such projects are dangerous.

AES and supporters say the project proposed by AES differs in its design from the facility that burned Jan. 16 in California.

“Failure rates for 18650 cells are less than 1 in 10 million,” Ray Byrne, manager of the energy storage technology and systems department at Sandia National Laboratories, wrote in an email earlier this year. “Because large numbers of cells are used in grid energy storage systems, there will be some failures. Fortunately, codes and standards combined with design techniques address the problem of thermal runaway … and limit the potential for spread to adjacent cells.”

The website for the Clean Energy Coalition of Santa Fe County, the leading opposition group, features a red-hot blaze emerging from a battery storage container.

“This facility would pose a significant risk of fire and toxic chemicals, threatening our air, water, and our homes,” the website’s main page states.