Oct. 22--Pueblo County's bid for an Xcel Energy-backed solar plant fell short, while the San Luis Valley appears the site of choice, utility and county executives say.

A proposal by Helios Energy Partners to install a 200-megawatt photovoltaic project at the Pueblo Army Depot did not make Xcel Energy's list of finalists, Pueblo County Public Works Director Greg Severance said Wednesday.

Going forward, the county and the Depot Reuse Authority will continue to work to obtain depot land from the Department of Defense in hopes of bidding on future solar projects, including an anticipated request for proposals in 2010 from the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Severance said.

Meanwhile, in Alamosa, an Xcel Energy official who visited the area Tuesday said the San Luis Valley could see more than 300 megawatts of solar power awarded next month.

Kent Scholl, a senior analyst for Xcel Energy, said the deal is contingent on approval from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission but that a contract is likely. "Based on the bids that we've seen to date, the most cost-effective resources

are here in the San Luis Valley," Scholl said.

In January, Xcel issued a request for proposals that asked for up to 600 megawatts of solar power with either storage capacity or natural gas backup. The request also asked for bids on up to 700 megawatts that could be generated with either wind or solar energy.

The company received 36 solar bids and forwarded its recommendations to the utilities commission earlier this year.

One megawatt of solar electricity is enough to power between 200 and 350 homes, depending on the type of technology used by the plant.

Scholl said the state commission's decision is expected by Nov. 6, at which time the company and winning bidders would release more information on plant details and locations.

The project for the San Luis Valley would involve solar thermal technology, which uses mirrors to gather the sun's heat, which in turn powers a generator. Such systems often require cooling systems.

Scholl, who spoke at a meeting of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District on Tuesday, said an air-cooled solar thermal plant would be ideally suited to the San Luis Valley.

"Your daytime temperatures here are low enough that we don't suffer the more severe performance penalties that we would with a dry-cooled plant in other parts of the state," he said.

"The Pueblo solar resource is good -- not as good as yours," he said. "But the daytime temperatures (in Pueblo) during our peak load conditions are very high and we suffer some extreme loss of generation capacity with the dry cooled-plant as opposed to a wet-cooled plant."

Scholl said Xcel also had forwarded a pool of proposals involving photovoltaic technology to the commission, although he did not specify how many or where they would be located. Photovoltaic technology directly converts the sun's energy to electricity.

Although a company study released earlier this year touted Pueblo's solar resource in looking at how three different solar technologies, that study did not look at solar thermal facilities with thermal storage.

Scholl reiterated the company's position that it is not looking to build any water-cooled solar plants.

"We knew early on, the critical nature that water plays," he said. He estimated that the company's preferred bid would require an estimated 250 acre-feet to 300 acre-feet of water per year.

matth@chieftain.com

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