Senate committee hears House Bill 93 to encourage advanced grid technologies for New Mexico

Representative Patricia Ortez presented House Bill 93 to the Senate conservation committee, saying the measure would help address congestion on transmission lines and speed connections for utility-scale resources including wind, solar and geothermal. "We have incredible energy resources in the state, but getting these new utility-scale sources ... hooked up to the grid is a pretty slow process," Ortez said.

The bill would require investor-owned utilities to include advanced grid technologies in planning filings to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission and would establish guidelines that the PRC could use when reviewing cost recovery for investments in those technologies. Senator Padilla, one of the bill's sponsors in the Senate, framed the effort as an economic development measure as well as a reliability project. "This is gonna absolutely help us in this very critical area," Padilla said.

Witnesses for the bill included representatives of environmental and industry groups. Sayuri Yamat of Clean Air Task Force said the measure "promotes advanced grid technology that can optimize the capacity of existing grid infrastructure" and would complement transmission planning. Jim Deshaudin of the Renewable Energy Industries Association of New Mexico testified that the bill would allow filing PRC plans that can defer investments in poles and wires by deploying technologies that maximize the efficiency of existing infrastructure.

Committee members questioned whether the bill would raise costs for ratepayers and which utilities would be covered. Senator Zell and others pressed whether cost recovery changes in the bill would simply create another path for utilities to earn returns on capital. Representative Ortez and Dr. Anna Linden Weller of Western Resource Advocates said proponents expect the technologies could avoid costlier new transmission builds in some cases and that provisions were drafted in consultation with the PRC to align reporting with existing integrated resource planning and annual-report processes.

Senators asked technical questions about what the statute would require of rural electric cooperatives, whether Federal Energy Regulatory Commission jurisdiction over transmission rates would be implicated, and how technologies such as topology optimization and dynamic line rating would work in practice. Dr. Weller described topology optimization as giving grid operators a systemwide view, "like using the Waze app to find a way around a traffic jam" for congestion on lines.

A roll-call was recorded in committee on the bill. The vote as recorded in the transcript shows multiple senators voting in favor and several opposed (the roll call recorded a majority of affirmative votes). The committee discussion included requests for additional consumer protections and clarity on PRC workload and cost impacts; one senator cited a PRC analysis estimating potential annual costs to the PRC at more than $55,000 per year.

The committee did not complete floor consideration of other items before scheduling further action; the bill was set to be heard further by the Senate at a later time.

Ending: Sponsors and stakeholders said the bill aims to give utilities and regulators specific guidance for approving and recovering costs for grid-efficiency investments. Supporters argued the measure could reduce the need for new transmission builds; skeptics continued to press on consumer cost protections and regulatory workload.