A new, large solar farm may be going up on the northeast side of El Paso depending upon the fortunes of an application recently submitted to the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
The El Paso Electric Company says it wants to build both a farm and solar array that will go up adjacent to the company’s Newman Natural Gas Power Plant off Stan Roberts S. Avenue.
The estimated $328 million project will include a 100-megawatt solar field with 100 megawatts of battery storage. The project is officially being called the Newman Buffer Generation Project.
According to documents filed with the Public Utility Commission, the project is needed to “address the significant growth” in demand from the company’s customers, while also making up for the “eventual retirement of older, less efficient generating units.”
Although an exact timeline for construction of the new facility has not been announced, the company has said it would like to see it operational by 2027.
The project comes in the wake of a 10-megawatt solar farm in San Elizario, featuring nearly 19,000 solar panels that the company began work on last year.
El Paso Electric has said that it wants to build five other solar and battery facilities before the end of the decade, a goal that could see the company operating upwards of 1,400 megawatts of solar capacity, along with almost 1,000 megawatts of storage capacity.
With more than 460,000 customers, El Paso Electric provides coverage to all of metro El Paso as well as Las Cruces, among other locations.
January 6, 2025
By Garry Boulard
