Business feature: Grant County moves wind farm deal forward

SILVER CITY — The Grant County Commission took the first step Oct. 18 toward what amounts to an incentive deal for a wind farm project proposed for the southern reaches of the county. After initial public reaction to the project, however, several commissioners had some serious questions for the project’s developers.

The Great Divide Wind Farm, which was first presented to the public at the commissioners’ work session on Oct. 16, is being developed by Boulder, Colo.- based renewable energy developer Scout Clean Energy LLC. The project’s estimated 60 to 100 wind turbines would be spread across 23,000 acres in the southern tail of the county, 14 miles east of Lordsburg.

Scout Clean Energy is seeking $400 million in Industrial Revenue Bonds from the county government, a complex process specific to New Mexico that basically creates a vehicle for the county and the Silver Consolidated School District — the two entities that primarily benefit from property tax collected in the area — to offer wind farm developers an exemption from property and most gross receipts taxes. The plan would simultaneously collect more revenue than they would receive otherwise through payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOT payments, from the developers throughout the life of the project.

The Silver school board would have to negotiate its own deal with the developers, separate from the county.

Developers estimate that the 250-megawatt wind farm could power 100,000 New Mexico homes, although it seems likely that much of the power would be sold out-of-state.

“Part of that depends on our off-taker — our power purchaser,” said Bob Karsted, a project manager for Scout Clean Energy. No contracts for the sale of the energy have been negotiated yet, Karsted said, although there are many options.

“It could be any combination of utilities or, potentially, commercial-industrial partners,” explained Mike Greczyn, a consultant to the project’s developer. “It’s becoming increasingly common for large public companies who wish to purchase renewable energy to go straight to the source - to sign a contract with a company like Scout and Facebook, Walmart, Google.”

District 3 Commissioner Alicia Edwards, who was chairing the meeting in Chair Billy Billings’ absence, asked how much New Mexicans might benefit from the electricity generated by the wind farm.

“Somebody, somewhere might be purchasing the output from a certain plant. There’s a whole market of people buying and selling electricity at different times,” Greczyn said. “And then there’s the impact of putting electricity onto a grid. Regardless of who signed what contract, we can’t determine where electricity goes. It goes where it’s needed.

“Many products are created and exported across state lines,” he continued. “There’s an extent to which those benefit local economic interests, but the product is bought and sold elsewhere. So this is similar.”