By Hannah Grover

The first community solar project on state trust lands in New Mexico broke ground on Thursday in Los Lunas.

The Global Give A Book Community Solar Project is one of eight currently slated to be installed on parcels leased from the State Land Office as the agency looks to increase renewable energy capacity on state lands.

The projects slated to be placed on state lands will be in Doña Ana, Grant, Hidalgo and Roosevelt counties.

The Global Give A Book project is being developed by the Albuquerque-based company Affordable Solar, which names each of its community solar projects after nonprofit organizations that are receiving monetary donations from the business.

The community solar arrays are five-megawatt projects that utility customers who are unable to install solar on their residences can subscribe to receive electricity from. 

There are 49 community solar projects in the works in New Mexico, including seven that Affordable Solar is working on. Three of Affordable Solar’s projects are on state trust land. 

Developers who proposed projects on state trust land received extra points during the scoring process while a third-party administrator was deciding which of the more than 400 projects to accept into the community solar program.

“The State Land Office has lots of land. This beautiful site, and pretty much as far as you can see in those directions, is state land,” Dylan Connelly with Affordable Solar said.

The State Land Office also has land in close proximity to communities, which is important because the community solar projects tie into distribution systems rather than relying on large transmission lines.

State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard said one of the benefits of community solar is that the electricity produced stays in the local area.

“Usually what happens is, we’re building a renewable project, and the community comes up and says, ‘where is this power going?’” she said. “And we have to tell them that most likely, if it’s a large-scale project, the power is going to be exported elsewhere, and the local folks won’t be able to take advantage of renewable power in their community. And that’s part of the reason we love community solar so much is because it gives access to local folks.”

She said community solar also helps solve some of the challenges communities in New Mexico face.

“Managing your 13 million acres of state land, we like to think of ourselves as problem solvers,” she said. “We want to be in communities, helping communities solve their challenges, and we use land to do that. And so obviously one challenge is how to get affordable, sustainable renewable power to people who may not have, like we said before, easy access to that. And so partnering on this community solar really has given us a land based solution to solving that problem.”

She said locating community solar projects on state lands also helps fund schools, universities and hospitals. The Global Give A Book Community Solar Project will generate $2.7 million for those institutions over the life of the lease. 

The project is being built on sandy lands covered in brush that Garcia Richard said has been used for agriculture in the past. She said agriculture and community solar uses can co-exist on leased State Trust Land. 

Other ways that the State Land Office can make money for schools, universities and hospitals in ways that solve problems include leasing lands for affordable housing, Garcia Richard said. However, she said often the State Trust Land is leased for agricultural purposes such as grazing.

The Global Give A Book Community Solar Project is located near an elementary school and Connelly said Affordable Solar plans on bringing students to tour the facility.

“We’re going to do one tour per year for the local school nearby so that those local schools can kind of see what’s going on,” he said. “What’s really exciting about these projects, to me is they move every 12 minutes…So it’s a fun tour to see as the sun’s moving across. There’s a little bit of physics lesson there as well.”