Roswell Daily Record THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
Commission to consider $290M solar farm Vol. 124, No. 11 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
BY JEFF TUCKER RECORD STAFF WRITER
Chaves County leaders are poised this week to begin a process that could result in a $290 million solar farm northeast of Roswell capable of powering more than 40,000 homes. Steve Stengel, director of corporate communications for NextEra Energy Resources LLC, said the proposed project entails 1,300 acres of private land northeast of Roswell that was for-
merly used for grazing. Stengel said NextEra Energy Resources, together with its affiliates the largest generator of renewable wind and solar energy in North America, is exploring three solar projects for the site 5 to 8 miles northeast of downtown Roswell. Two projects would involve 70 megawatt solar fields, while the third project would entail a 30megawatt project, Stengel said. Together, NextEra says the three projects could generate
January 13, 2015
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enough electricity to power more than 40,000 average homes, avoiding approximately 370,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions that would have been produced if the electricity had been generated using fossil fuels.
Stengel said the goal is for the solar farm to be operational within two years. He emphasized NextEra, based in Juno Beach, Fla., has not yet negotiated a purchase agreement for the sale of electricity generated at the site.
“If the projects move forward, the expectation is that they would be operational by the end of 2016,” Stengel said Monday. “As of today, we don’t have a power purchase agreement, so we don’t have an agreement to purchase the power. That’s something that we’re working on. We’re a wholesale provider. I don’t know that we would build the project before we have an agreement in place for someone to purchase.” Stengel said electricity
generated at the solar farm could be sold to utilities, electric power cooperatives and municipalities. “We are looking at three potential projects,” Stengel said. “They would interconnect at a 115-kilovolt transmission system that’s owned by Southwestern Public Service.” Southwestern Public Service Co., based in Amarillo, Texas, has a substation at Wrangler and East Pine Lodge roads, in the heart of the proposed solar field.
RPD officers attend New York memorial BY RANDAL SEYLER RECORD CITY EDITOR
Four law enforcement officers from Southeastern New Mexico made the trip to New York City on Jan. 4 to honor a fallen police officer. Two of the officers from New Mexico were from the Roswell Police Department — Detective Jon Gokey and Officer Scott Wrenn. Also attending the funeral were Corporal Rigo Chavez and Officer Allison Gokey of the Artesia Police Department. The officers went to New York City to attend the funeral of Officer Wenjian Liu. Officers Liu, 32, and his partner Rafel Ramos, 40, were shot in their parked patrol car in Brooklyn on Dec. 20 by a man who had announced on social media his intention to kill police of ficers, and who killed himself in a nearby subway station shortly after the
Submitted Photos
Above: In New York, Corporal Rigo Chavez, from
left, and Officer Allison Gokey of the Artesia Police
Department, and Detective Jon Gokey and Officer
Scott Wrenn of the Roswell Police Department.
Right: Many police officers watched the service on large screens outside the church.
Southwestern Public Service Co. is a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, a utility holding company. Building the solar farm would provide 300 to 400 construction jobs and create four or five full-time operations jobs, according to a NextEra Energy fact sheet. NextEra already owns and operates a solar project and two wind projects in New Mexico. The company is proSee FARM, Page A3
shooting. Ramos’ funeral was held on Dec. 27. “This was my first time in New York,” said Wrenn in an email. “We were greeted by NYPD officers at the airport, where they offered all of us a ride to our hotels. My impression from the first day was nothing but good. Everyone from NYPD to the citizens were approachable and helpful.” It was also Gokey’s first time in New York City. “My first impression was how nice everyone was,” Gokey said. “You always hear stories about people being rude and in too much of a hurry for anyone but it was the complete opposite. Everyone we talked to was extremely nice and more helpful than I could have imagined.” Wrenn said the New York police officers were friendly and appreciative that the New Mexico officers were there to show their supSee MEMORIAL, Page A3
Volunteers change name of board Police Committee discuss staffing to Roswell Tourism Council BY RANDAL SEYLER RECORD CITY EDITOR
The New Year brings a new name to a long-standing board — The Chaves County Tourism Council will now be known as the Roswell Tourism Council. “‘Roswell’ is a million-dollar word,” said Judy Stubbs, tourism council chairperson. “Our ad hoc committee thinks people will recognize Roswell more readily than Chaves County,” she said. The ad hoc committee consisted of Stubbs, Elaine Mayfield, Kerry Moore and
Edie Stevens, and the panel brought several action items to the January meeting of the tourism council on Monday. Stubbs said there had been several requests for brochures from around the state, attesting to the popularity of Roswell as a tourist destination, and Mayfield noted that most non-Roswell residents would even know to type “Chaves County” into a search engine if they were looking for Roswell information. “Our main job as a council is local tourism,” May-
field said. Stubbs said that when the CCTC was formed years ago, it was named after the county so that other communities in Chaves County could participate and apply for state funds. As those funds dried up, so did the participation of the other communities in the county, she said. “We’ve invited other communities but they don’t come,” Juliana Halvorson said. The members present voted unanimously to
team is the leader in terms of achieving the lowest temperature and advancing this science into a practical technology,” Sheik-Bahae said. The system works through the transfer of energy in the form of either heat or light. To reach these extreme temperatures, a high-powered laser of a very specific color, or wavelength, is directed into a crystal, which absorbs the laser light and fluoresces. In other words, energy is transferred into the crystal as light and is then immediately transferred back out in the form of light. The trick, however, lies in
how different wavelengths of light correspond to different amounts of energy. Because the energy of a light particle, or photon, coming out of the crystal is a little bit greater than the energy absorbed from the laser photons, the crystal must give up some of its own energy to make that new wavelength of light. That extra energy comes from the thermal energy of the crystal, or its heat, which is carried away and causes the crystal to cool down.
HIGH 39 LOW 27
• GLENN ALLEN FROST • ROBERT W. YEO • ANTHONY “TONY” LOUIS MERZ
BY RANDAL SEYLER RECORD CITY EDITOR
Roswell Police Department manning has about a dozen openings, which is similar to last month’s numbers, the Police Committee was told on Monday. Deputy Chief Brad McFadden reported to the committee members that the department lost one member to retirement last month, putting the number of openings within the department at 13. “But we just added four new officers who are in their first phase of train-
ing, and we have several more in the process from Michigan,” McFadden said. Two of the Roswell officers who recently graduated from the academy were top graduates from the program, the deputy chief reported. They are beginning their next level of training within the department. The department’s manning allocation is 98 personnel total with 13 of those positions being open. When it comes to recruiting new officers in 2015, McFadden said he
was not sure the department would retur n to Michigan in search of officers. “We have been successful in the past, but this last trip we did not get as many officers as we would have liked,” he said. Several applicants fell out in the background process, and a number of others pulled their applications for one reason or another, the deputy chief said. “We haven’t done the El Paso trip in a while,” McFadden said. “We See STAFF, Page A3
NM lab becomes world’s coolest lab using optical refrigeration BY LAUREN TOPPER NEW MEXICO DAILY LOBO
ALBUQUERQUE — Students and faculty alike may be turning their attention to things such as hot chocolate and war m sweaters, but one lab on campus is trying to make things colder. Much colder. Using crystals and lasers, a team of scientists headed by Department of Physics and Astronomy professor Mansoor SheikBahae has developed and is currently fine-tuning a novel method known as optical refrigeration for cooling solids to extremely low temperatures. “It is fair to say that our
TODAY’S FORECAST
See TOURISM, Page A3
While the laws of physics allowed scientists to predict that this was a possibility more than 80 years ago, actually constructing a sys-
tem to tur n theory into reality was another thing entirely. After numerous attempts by other groups, the effect was first experimentally observed at Los Alamos National Lab in 1995, Sheik-Bahae said. Since then, working in collaboration with LANL, he said his group has succeeded in lowering the temperature of a crystal to around -184° C (-300° F) — already an extremely cold temperature — and they’re working on forcing it even lower. “The idea here that one can cool matter with laser beams was predicted many, See LAB, Page A2
• LAURA M. RIDDLE
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Diana Cervantes/New Mexico Daily Lobo Photo
Saeid Rostami, graduate student in Optical Science and Engineering at UNM, works with a system of laser beams in the Physics Lab. CLASSIFIEDS ..........B6
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