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Future Energy Generation for Los Alamos
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The Board of Public Utilities (BPU) is hosting a Town Hall meeting to discuss electric generation resources for the future. Deparment of Public Utilities (DPU) will present information to support a community discussion about the County's goals and requirements for meeting future electrical loads.
Why is this important?
The San Juan Generating Station closed down in September 2022. Before this coal plant near Farmington closed down, DPU had 4% ownership and 36 MW of dedicated power from it. For now, that power is being replaced through other contracts/agreements. DPU has a current contract for 25 MW with a mix of coal, wind and solar for a couple of years. There may be carbon free resources out there that would better fit our energy portfolio more appropriately in the future than power purchased on the open market. DPU is focused on 2025 and beyond for these replacement resources.
DPU has a goal to reach carbon-neutrality by 2040. That’s only 17 years away! If we are going to achieve this goal, we need to start now. Currently, carbon neutral power resources being explored are hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear.
BPU has some big decisions to make regarding the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP), a proposed nuclear electric generation facility to be constructed at Idaho National Laboratory that will utilize Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology developed by NuScale Power. While Los Alamos County has a commitment to the project with avenues to exit it without penalty, it is a very big decision and we want public input on it.
At the end of 2022, NuScale and Fluor delivered the class 3 project cost estimate on the CFPP to UAMPS. NuScale also delivered the Standard Design Application (SDA) for the 6-module plant configuration with a total capacity of 462MW. These are very significant milestones which have led to the completion of the following activities:
1. Evaluating the cost estimate by...
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