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Los Alamos utilities outline options to manage excess solar from Foxtail Flats as markets and lab loads shift
Summary
Deputy utility manager Ben Ulbrich told the board Foxtail Flats will produce more daytime solar than the county can use (about 170 MW net), and staff laid out ranked options — selling a 10 MW LRS share, short-term term sales, sales to Sandia/Kirtland, market participation via EDAM, optimizing the combustion gas turbine or adding storage — to reduce curtailment risk.
Los Alamos County Deputy Utility Manager Ben Ulbrich told the Utilities Board that the Foxtail Flats solar project is on track but later than originally planned and that the county now expects a significant daytime surplus of photovoltaic (PV) generation.
"We have an excess of PV, a 170 megawatts," Ulbrich said, adding that the county cannot use all the daytime output even accounting for battery storage and the portions already allocated to partners. He warned the board that, in a worst-case curtailment scenario, the county could effectively pay as much as "$70 a megawatt hour" to not accept generation when there is nowhere to send it.
Ulbrich framed the problem as the product of two trends: timing and scale at Foxtail Flats and evolving regional market arrangements. He said PNM’s planned entry into EDAM (the extended day‑ahead market) will mean the county — as a PNM transmission customer — will participate in a day‑ahead scheduling regime, while the Laramie River Station (LRS) coal asset will join the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) market area. That creates the need to manage power flows across two balancing areas and multiple markets.
To reduce exposure, staff presented a ranked set of options:
- Sell LRS daytime output (the county’s 10 MW share) into the SPP market when Foxtail PV is available. Ulbrich said LRS joining SPP (April 2026) enables straightforward hourly daytime sales at the generating site; staff view this as a top option.
- Pursue short‑term term sales of forecast excess PV (10–50 MW blocks for 1–5 years) to offtakers. Ulbrich said staff have been seeking indicative offers and consider this an attractive near‑term risk transfer while load grows.
- Expand sales to Sandia National Laboratories/Kirtland Air Force Base. The draft 2026 Electric Coordination Agreement (ECA) includes language for Sandia/Kirtland to take roughly "30 megawatts of the PV capacity and 25% of the battery energy storage system," Ulbrich said; additional daytime purchases by those partners could reduce the county’s oversupply.
- Modify the LANL gas turbine (CGTG) controls to allow automatic market participation so the unit can be run when prices call for it — decoupling its operation from behind‑the‑meter LANL needs.
- Sell excess PV directly into EDAM or through third‑party traders, though Ulbrich said pricing and precise mechanics are currently unknown.
- Add more battery capacity. Modeling shown to the board suggested an incremental 20 MW/80 MWh battery would cost roughly $3,000,000 a year (using a $12.50/kW‑month price) and would lower curtailment exposure by about $1.5 million — a benefit:cost ratio Ulbrich reported as about 0.5, which staff judged unattractive today.
- Curtail PV as a last resort; Ulbrich said full curtailment could cost millions (modeling showed an $8,000,000/year exposure in some scenarios) and is the least desirable option.
Board members pressed staff on reliability questions. Chair Gibson asked whether relying more heavily on Foxtail Flats risks local reliability if the new resource trips. Ulbrich said the new markets (EDAM/EIM) and forecasting tools should provide additional liquidity and flexibility, but he offered no hard numeric guarantee, saying only that operators are experienced at managing unexpected outages and that the county can retain resources (for example, LRS) when needed.
Members also asked about the 03/01/2026 expiry of the Mercuria contract that previously covered some supply; Ulbrich said staff have solicited indicative pricing to fill the likely March–September gap but cannot execute any deals until an updated ECA is in place.
Ulbrich summarized the board‑level implications: staff will continue pursuing term sales and offtaker leads, work with PNM to understand EDAM interfaces, refine market and reliability modeling, and return with a focused financial analysis of the preferred options. He also agreed to schedule a tutorial for the board on EDAM mechanics and likely local impacts once PNM’s implementation details are clearer.
The board did not take any final votes on the Foxtail Flats options at the meeting; staff described these as operational and planning steps to be refined and brought back during budgeting and contract decision points.
