Truth or Consequences Electric Department Director Bo Easley gave his quarterly verbal report at the May 14 regular city commission meeting–a new practice imposed by new City Manager Gary Whitehead–and near the end he let drop that the solar farm has basically been inoperable since its inverter caught fire April 2023.
And we’re just now hearing about it?
City Manager Gary Whitehead, for the first time since he was hired, which has only been a few months, didn’t respond to my request for information. Undoubtedly he’s busy. And he was not around when the contract was negotiated. He would never have made such a bad deal. This I know by observing his lightning quick understanding of the long- and short-term implications of engineering reports, especially to the city’s finances.
Juan Fuentes was the city manager in 2015, when the contract was negotiated. The city commission rubber stamped it in willful ignorance, trusting Fuentes and the solar company, abdicating their obligation to exercise fiscal oversight and ensure its constituents would benefit.
For details on the contract see: https://sierracountysun.org/feature/solar-farm-is-not-cutting-down-on-electric-bills/
The contract is into its 10th year. It specifies the city must buy all the electricity it produces. The rate it charges has been higher than Sierra Electric Cooperative’s wholesale rate for the last five years.
The basis of the contract is a legal fiction: Sierra Electric will raise its rates three percent a year and we, the solar farm, will beat that price.
Sierra Electric has not raised its rates nearly that much.
The contract requires the solar farm owners to deliver a written report of the “cost savings,” but since they are based on fiction, they are fraudulently misleading. And the city commission signed up to be fed this pabulum at their constituents’ expense.
Easley and prior city managers have not reported on even these fictitious savings over the last 10 years. Morris Madrid, city manager from 2019 to 2021, admitted during a city commission meeting that the contract was one of the worst he had ever seen.
In keeping with the tradition of hunkydoryism, the city commissioners said little when Easley reported the solar farm has been down for two years.
Mayor Rolf Hechler asked, “how much are we paying?” Easley sort of answered. He said the city is being paid the lease amount.
What Easley should have made clear is if the city is still paying for any electric energy at the solar farm.
Concerning the lease, the city owns the land beneath the solar farm, and charges the solar farm owner a paltry $2,000 or so a year. The current owner is Goldman Sachs, but the facility has changed hands at least five times. The green-energy tax credit makes it an attractive short-term investment most likely, which the Trump administration will no doubt eliminate.
When I did the research in 2020, linked above, the city was purchasing a low of about $21,000 a month in the the winter and a high of about $31,000 a month in summer from the solar farm owner. It is a 2 megawatt facility.
How much the city is saving by now purchasing that electricity from Sierra Electric is unknown. Let the city do its own research and reporting on the last five years. I already did it once, only to be called a liar by members of the Public Utility Advisory Board. They didn’t specify what facts I got wrong, simply claimed I was “making the city look bad.”
Easley or past city managers should have been reporting each year on the state of the contracts and rates the city has with its three electric wholesalers, WAPA, Sierra Electric and the solar farm.
But the city commissioners have allowed directors and city managers to not give regular fact-based reports since Juan Fuentes became city manager fifteen years ago.
Easley and other long-presiding department heads have been conditioned to not report, to not plan, to not give financial figures or analysis. I don’t blame Easley or other department heads for not reporting. I blame the city commission.
Now that Whitehead is bringing back reports, it’s going to take a while to train department heads what facts and figures and issues are salient. The city commission probably won’t change. They won’t use the information to plan and make decisions. As in the past, they will “trust” the city manager is doing their job of fiscal oversight.
Still, the city commission must sign off on what is put before them. I asked Whitehead to urge the city commission to act now, to cancel the solar farm contract for nonperformance, with no response so far.
Why they haven’t seized the chance to cancel over the last two years is evidence of the city commission’s entrenched know-nothing hunkydoryism.
The 2015 the city commission stupidly approved a 25-year contract. When solar panels were and are a rapidly improving and developing technology.
In 2015 solar panels had a 15 to 22 percent efficiency rating compared to 22 to 40 percent in 2025. The price of solar panels has dropped 90 percent in the last ten years, along with the price of kilowatts. https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-have-fallen-by-around-20-every-time-global-capacity-doubled
But the city commission ensured the 4,000 electric ratepayers won’t be able to benefit from better technology and lower electric rates by tying them to a really stupid contract–unless they act now to correct that mistake.
I am submitting this comment on behalf of James Nelson of Magdalena, who had trouble getting his comment accepted:
Thanks for reporting this and for the coinage “hunkydoryism”! Though it seems like a rock that could be hurled with equal force in any direction.
Please note the error in ” the city was buying about 2 megawatts of electricity a year”. This confusion of power with energy appears all the time in the NYT and ABQJ, papers of record.
Megawatts are units of power, which is the rate of energy delivery per unit of time. We can’t buy a rate — we’d laugh if someone said they “bought 30 mpg per year” with their car.
What we buy and sell is energy, which is measured in power times the time it’s exerted. Two megawatts exerted over one hour generates two megawatt hours (MWh).
Did the city buy two MWh per year? If so, it should have spent only a few hundred dollars per year at current energy prices, not $21,000 per month. I generate that much energy in two months with my household solar panels. Did the city pay a set amount per year for whatever energy was generated at a rate of 2 MW? But that’s not how we buy energy — a glance at a household electric bill shows that we’re paying for each kWh we consume, not for access to a generation utility with 1 GW of power. What’s missing from this story (unless the money is the whole story, in which case why are we talking about megawatts at all?) is the amounts of energy purchased, in MWh.
I am fixing the error now. Thanks so much for the correction.