It is an agricultural corridor in Alamosa County that is drying faster and seeing more buy-and-dry deals than other parts of the San Luis Valley due to the scarcity of water from the Upper Rio Grande Basin.
On 2,578 acres of private land off State Highway 17 leading into Mosca and Hooper, a number of families are entering into contracts with NextEra Energy and its bid to ultimately develop 600 megawatts of solar energy and 600 megawatts of battery storage on the fields that once grew crops.
The solar project, dubbed the “Spud Valley Energy Center,” is the largest ever conceived for the Valley and one of Colorado’s biggest. It comes at a time when ag producers in Subdistrict 1 of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District are being forced to reduce their footprint to save on the water. Solar development then, in a Valley plentiful with sunshine, becomes an alternative for the land and a company like NextEra Energy has the means to make it happen.
“A number of the landowners we’re working with have already either retired their wells or they’re participating in CREP (Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program) to rest their lands for longterm,” said Evan Reimondo, the project manager, in an interview with Alamosa Citizen.
Spud Valley is perfectly sited when you consider the other solar development already in the corridor, the Public Service Co. substation near the project site, the water conservation subdistrict it is in, and Alamosa County’s own interests for solar development through its 1041 permit process.
A different solar development proposal — Korsail Energy’s Cornflower Solar project — had its permit application denied by the county commissioners last year after it met a headwind of resistance from locals concerned about the location of the project that was within a migratory range of sensitive wildlife areas in west Alamosa County.
Korsail was seeking to build 90 megawatts of solar and 80 megawatts of battery storage on 986 acres, but was doomed because of the location it selected. NextEra Energy’s Spud Valley doesn’t seem to carry that burden with its location, and at 600 megawatts puts the Valley on the map for solar generation to support Colorado’s goal of a state power grid built on 80 percent renewable energy by 2030.
“Colorado’s demand for electricity is going to keep growing as the population grows and technology develops and all of those things,” said Reimondo, Spud Valley’s project manager. “So we’re preparing for the future when we over-permit. By permitting for 600, it gives us that future flexibility.”
The plan is to build an initial 200 megawatts of solar and 200 megawatts of battery storage, and then stage to 600 megawatts of each from there. The transmission bottleneck — bringing power in and out of San Luis Valley — presents the biggest challenge.
“As the grid is built out, as network upgrades are completed in the future, new (transmission) lines are built, and we’ll be ready to take advantage of that,” Reimondo says.
Alamosa County is currently reviewing NextEra Energy’s 1041 permit application and eventually will hold public hearings at the county planning level and then before the county commissioners.
Reimondo says the company hopes to begin construction in 2027, with the first 200 megawatts of solar and battery storage built and tied into the neighboring Public Service Co. substation by the end of 2029.