By RICHARD NEBEL
Los Alamos
This is in response to Robert Gibson’s recent talk (link) on the DPU given to the Kiwanis Club. I wrote an Op-Ed on May 8, 2025 (link), that discussed why I thought this proposed solar farm project was a bad idea. I won’t repeat that here. Suffice it to say that nothing I wrote in that article was either refuted or challenged. It was simply ignored.
I would like for Mr. Gibson to respond to that Op-Ed piece. In particular, I would like him to respond to the arguments about Los Alamos’s susceptibility to having our power shut off during wind events if we continue to ship power into the county. He said the power lines already exist. Who owns them and who determines if they are going to be shut down?
Let me remind you that PNM already shut Los Alamos down from two trunk lines to one trunk line during a wind event last Spring. Parts of Southeastern NM were completely shut off. Is this the future that we have to look forward to?
I have three other questions that I would like for him to respond to:
- Donald Trump has said that he is shutting down all solar farm projects in the US. Why do you think this one is going to be built?
- My understanding is that LANL has pulled out of this project. I can see how their participation might be politically intractable. Is that true?
- 80% of the DPU power goes to LANL. Their power consumption peaks at midday, not in the evening. It looks to me like your time-of-day pricing scheme is asking the residents of Los Alamos to subsidize LANL. Why not just take the excess capacity that LANL is freeing up in the evening to cover the nighttime electricity needs of the residents of Los Alamos?