Dueling power plays

With New Mexico’s decades-old reliance on massive coal-fired generating plants winding down, Public Service Company of New Mexico is facing a prolonged battle with local groups over the future of the state’s electric grid. The company filed a new “integrated resource plan,” or IRP, with the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission last summer that calls for shutting down the San Juan Generating Station near Farmington by 2022, and pulling out of the nearby Four Corners Power Plant by 2031. It proposes replacing nearly 700 megawatts of lost coal-fired generation from those plants with a lot more natural gas, nuclear power and renewables like solar and wind.