{"id":41190,"date":"2022-04-13T17:24:39","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T23:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/feud-over-closure-of-san-juan-generating-station-could-cost-customers\/"},"modified":"2022-04-13T23:24:39","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T23:24:39","slug":"feud-over-closure-of-san-juan-generating-station-could-cost-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/feud-over-closure-of-san-juan-generating-station-could-cost-customers\/","title":{"rendered":"Feud over closure of San Juan Generating Station could cost customers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The San Juan Generating Station is a coal-fired electric power plant located near its coal source, the San Juan Mine, near Waterflow, New Mexico. (Courtesy of ecoflight.org)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

This year\u2019s planned closure of a New Mexico coal-fired power plant is expected to save money for the state\u2019s utility company and its customers, but consumer advocates worry customers won\u2019t see those savings for up to two years.<\/p>\n

Public Service Co. of New Mexico will close two units at the San Juan Generating Station by September, but it wants to hold off on distributing customer savings from the closure, perhaps until 2024.<\/p>\n

Pat O\u2019Connell, senior analyst for clean-energy policy with Western Resource Advocate, said that isn\u2019t what was initially negotiated, and savings delayed are savings denied.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow often is it better for you to have a savings a year-and-a-half from now, compared to having it tomorrow? That\u2019s just not how life works,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the concept that it\u2019s good from a customer point of view is dubious, to be generous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Western Resource Advocates is one of three groups that filed a legal motion with the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission to enforce earlier financing provisions agreed to by PNM. O\u2019Connell said withheld savings to typical residential electricity customers would be about $7 per month, costing the utility company about $8 million to $9 million per month.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell said he believes PNM wants to delay issuance of bonds to refinance its San Juan plant in order to recover lost investments and satisfy shareholders, not its millions of customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is at a time where cost of everything else is going up, right? So, you could have a situation where not only are you getting cleaner electricity, your electric bill could be going down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He believes the PRC should require the utility company to start crediting customers for what they should be saving when the plant closes, and not wait until the yet-to-be-filed next general rate case concludes, likely in January 2024 \u2013 or 18 months after the first unit at San Juan closes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way PNM has timed things, they\u2019re going to make it appear that this clean-energy transition costs money,\u201d he said. \u201cBut PNM moving beyond San Juan and replacing it with clean-energy resources does save you money.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Mexico\u2019s Energy Transition Act requires local utilities to convert from fossil fuels to 100% carbon-free generation by 2045. It\u2019s unclear how soon the PRC will decide the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shutting down and converting to clean energy is supposed to save money<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1424,1427,28,138,1426,443,2901],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-41190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coal","tag-energy-general","tag-headlines","tag-new-mexico","tag-renewable-energy","tag-san-juan-county-new-mexico","tag-san-juan-generating-station"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41190"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=41190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}