Santa Fe to Increase Use of Coal and Nuclear Power

The City of Santa Fe is negotiating a deal that will increase the consumption of coal and nuclear power for city operations by more than 70 percent over the next several years.

City officials have been negotiating with PNM, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, to provide power for a new drinking water system it is building. The new water system will require 27-million kilowatt-hours per year.

Proposals to get that energy from on-site generation were said to be unfeasible by PNM in 2006, and creating a public power entity to provide energy for the system was deemed “risky” by the engineer hired by the city to study alternatives. The cost of the electricity needed to run the city’s new water system cannot be determined, because PNM was recently given the right to raise electricity rates as needed to cover its fuel costs.

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Comments

[Bill Dempster]

Mark,
Appreciate very much your news items. RE: New Water system for Santa Fe:
Do you know any details of the new water system that will consume 27 million kWh/year ? That's equivalent to 3 MW continuous average power consumption - seems to me to be huge and hard to imagine what that is for. Could they be producing large amounts of water by reverse osmosis ? And how did they arrive at conclusion that they couldn't produce their own power ? There must be a report on all this - do you know how it is described and what agency holds it ?

[Mark Sardella]

Hi Bill, and thanks for your comment. The energy consumption data was from an article that appeared on July 13th in the Santa Fe New Mexican. I don’t know whether it’s accurate…the article gives the name of the consultant that calculated it, but I didn’t talk with him. When the Buckman Direct Diversion project first came up years ago, I asked the city years ago for the volume of water, pipe diameter, and elevation change so that I could estimate energy usage, but they never furnished the data. The “conclusion” that the city can’t produce their own power comes from PNM, based on their contention that onsite generation is too “risky” to be relied on. They used that same argument when I wanted the Santa Fe Energy Task Force to investigate onsite generation for the BDD in 2005. I don’t know where you can find the report, but a good start would be Nick Schiavo at the City at 955-6693.