Wind farm on way to Roosevelt County

PORTALES — A new 522-megawatt wind farm is on its way to Roosevelt County, according to officials of Invenergy.

Xcel Energy signed an agreement with the energy company Tuesday morning to buy the Sagamore Wind Project facility once it is completed. Krista Jo Mann, senior business development manager for the Invenergy, said the power will go into the eastern power grid.

Mann shared plans for the project with Roosevelt County commissioners Tuesday morning, saying that the project, to be located 20 miles southeast of Portales, is expected to become operational sometime in 2020 with around 250 wind turbines.

"We're sort of at a mid-point in development, so the site has been under private land leases for several years now, but we also have land agents signing a few additional land owners," Mann told commissioners. "We are in the process of finalizing the project boundary."

She added that environmental surveys and interconnection studies are currently in the process and meteorological towers have been up in the area for a few years, so "we have a good sense of what the wind resource is here, and as you know, it's a strong resource."

Mann said all the project's assets are currently owned by Invenergy, and the project is being built on all private land with the land owners receiving revenue from the project once it is up and running.

She said her company anticipates the project about 200 construction jobs and 20 to 30 permanent jobs once it is operational.

"Any businesses or individuals here who have something that they would like to offer to the project, we're collecting their contact information, so that when we're ready to go to construction, we have a database of people compiled and sorted by the type of services they provide, and we provide that to the general contractor," Mann said, adding that the company likes to use local businesses as much as possible with projects.

"We're happy about the project. We like its odds of success," she said.

Xcel Spokesman Wes Reeves said the American Wind Energy Association confirmed Tuesday that the wind farm will be the largest in New Mexico.

"With tax credits, more affordable technology costs and no fuel costs, we can lock in wind energy prices that will make wind our lowest cost-generating resource," said an Xcel press release. "Even though electricity costs are expected to rise over the next 30 years, we can shave $2.8 billion off the costs of generating electricity with more wind, and these savings will take a bit out of future increases. Put simply, wind energy is now the best deal as we move forward in securing energy resources for the future."