Latest utilities update highlighted at NAIOP meeting

The operative words at the Feb. 2 Rio Rancho Roundtable NAIOP meeting, with the topic “Utilities Round-Up,” were gigabyte and giga watt.

Those words came up more than a few times at the February session, held at premiere Cinemas, with “Utilities Round-Up” the topic.

Several dozen businesspeople in attendance heard presentations from Invenergy, PNM, Gas Company of New Mexico, Unite Private Networks (UPN) and Quantum Fiber, with most dealing with how the future is shaping up when it comes to energy and communications.

• William Consuegra, director of transmission development for Invenergy, explained his company’s massive $2-plus billion energy pathway, which is expected to lead to 3,500 construction jobs and tens of millions of dollars in annual payments to tribal, state and local governments, plus director payments to landowners allowing the use of their land for the transmission lines.

“On average, there’s about $275 million that goes from Invenergy to landowners, state local agencies, organizations, etc.,” he said, “so we want to be a good member of the community and a business partner.”

Eminent domain, he said, is a last resort to obtain the company’s path, Consuegra said.

“The northeastern corner of the state is the No. 1 area in the entire state of New Mexico for wins,” he said. “It’s got an estimated 20,000 megawatts of power it can harvest a year.

“Unfortunately, there’s no transmission lines up there. This is a challenge,” he said. “How do we get that to an area where it will be used? So what we decided was to take power from the northeastern corner to the northwestern corner of the state, an area that has an infrastructure that we believe can be used for this type of project that we want to build.”

As for the energy and environmental benefits, Consuegra said, 4,000 megawatts of low-cost, clean and renewable energy will be delivered – the equivalent of 1 million cars on the road, as well as the equivalent of about 2 million homes powered by renewable energy. The project supports 50% renewable energy by 2030, a goal of the state’s Energy Transition Act.

Rio Rancho is within its nine-county New Mexico North Path; the required 135 feet to 200 feet wide “economically feasible” path cuts through Sandoval County and part of Rio Rancho, with three or four 135-foot towers per mile. The company has two potential paths, he said, yet to be formally approved.

To send the power 400 miles, two converter stations would be built, each at a cost of $450 million, with the one in the northeast converting alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC), and the one in the Farmington area converting the DC back into AC.

Plus, there will be an opportunity for excess power to be exported.

Once approved, the project won’t start for a few more years, with operation beginning in 2028-29.

• Mark Hallamore, regional vice president of sales in Albuquerque, took time to share what Unite Private Networks has been doing in New Mexico since 2018, one of 24 states it serves.

As a fiber-optic provider, UPN provides internet service, private-networking services for businesses to share information, and telecommunications services.

“The upper limit on speed (of fiber optics) has never been found,” he said. “We all need to be part of the discussion on what’s called the digital divide – those that have broadband access and those who don’t.

“The only thing we don’t provide is residential,” he noted, although that could be something done in the future through its underground infrastructure.

UPN is one of the largest providers of fiber WAN services to K-12 school districts in the U.S, including Albuquerque Public Schools and, in the immediate future, Las Cruces Schools.

Quantum Fiber’s goal is having fiber-connected communities, not only in New Mexico, but throughout the U.S., which required building 350 miles of fiber-optic capacity.

“We’re only one of three or four providers in this community that have to be part of the solution to solve this digital divide,” he said, which includes reducing the “brain drain” and keeping New Mexicans finishing college here for their careers.

• Eisha Saavedra-Torres, director of customer marketing for PNM, gave a short presentation, noting the proposed $8 billion acquisition of PNM by Connecticut-based Avangrid has not been approved by the state’s Public Regulation Commission.

“At this point in time, we have about six of the seven approvals that we need to move forward,” she said, with the state Supreme Court hearing PNM’s plea this year.

She told of PNM’s available help in potential customers getting infrastructure cost estimates and billing estimates.

“Since November of 2019, we have either led or had an integral part in bringing 19 large customers to the state of New Mexico; many of them are household names,” she said. “Over the last two years, we’ve helped three of our New Mexico companies expand significantly. With all three of those, we were able to help them navigate the NM PRC process, to get incentives that facilitated their ability to expand and stay in the state.”

The PNM “pipeline,” she said, has grown to four gigawatts “and growing by the day,” Saavedra-Torres said. “Rio Rancho is very well positioned in our system to grow; there are not one but several transmission lines that run through our city (that are) highly expandable.”

• Tom Bullard, the vice president of engineering, gas management and technical services for the Gas Co. of New Mexico, described how “a very exciting project,” the proposed LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) storage system, to be built in Rio Rancho, works.

It will be a 100-foot tall silo of sorts on a 25-acre site, about a mile north of Double Eagle Airport, “an ideal location for us,” because of the Gas Co.’s transmission lines’ proximity. The facility will be manned 24/7 by three to six qualified personnel; liquid gas is not flammable, he said.

The tank will contain liquid gas, cooled to -260 degrees, because liquid gas takes less space than the natural gas form. The tank will store “the equivalent of a billion cubic feet of natural gas,” Bullard said, “about 12 million gallons.”

“When we need it, we would liquify it in the summer months, when gas prices are cheaper, and then pull it out in the winter months, when the demand is higher and prices are higher,” Bullard said.

The $181 million project, awaiting approval from the PRC, is expected to start construction in spring 2024 and be completed in the fall of 2026.

The project came about in response to a 2021 regulation by the PRC about examining alternatives for gas storage. Like some of the other projects, the Gas Co. expects over 100 qualified individuals working at the site, one of more than 100 such facilities in the U.S.

· Michael Velarde of Quantum Fiber, part of Lumen Technologies and related to CenturyLink, said, “We act as the pipe for the internet: fiber. We have fibers that traverse every state in America; we have them that go across the oceans and connect the world.”

Lumen, he said, is the second-largest U.S. communications provider, with 39,000 employees and 450,000 global miles.

“A lot of folks use our fiber,” he said, all receiving reliable broadband.

“Whatever solution you have, going down to your home, whether you want a telephone line or high-speed internet, we do it. … Anything you want or need, we’re capable of doing.”

“Small business, large business, government and residential (applications)” are available from Quantum, which reported fiscal year 2020 revenue as $20.7 billion, he said. “We connect our competitors, us and everyday users, including governmental sources.

“We’ll go to single-family homes; we’ll go to apartment complexes; we’ll go to businesses,” he said. “We’ll actually put the equipment into the house, so if you’re renting an apartment, you can walk in day one, turn on the WiFi on your phone, find us, hit the button, put in your credit card (number) and create a subscription for your highs-peed internet within minutes.”

Of course, he said, there still are uses for copper in communications, such as the innards of an ATM machine and how it transmits data.

“You can always go fiber; some of it’s overkill,” he said. “We all want the fastest; you can use 100 gig anywhere. Not everything needs it so in our CenturyLink plan … we offer those solutions.”