In 2019, the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, spent more than $4 million in bond revenue to install solar panels across seven municipal buildings. However, over 1,000 of these panels have sat unused during the last six years.
Panels on two of the buildings have yet to generate any power, while another operates at just 6% of its capacity. Officials say these delays are tied to changes in energy consumption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The solar investment was part of Mayor Tim Keller’s initiative to have all municipal operations run on 100% renewable energy by 2025. Albuquerque is currently meeting around 80% of those needs with clean power.
The city plans to bring the unused panels online and contribute to that total by the end of 2025, according to the city’s Chief Administrative Officer Samantha Sengel.
The inactive solar panels are located in Albuquerque’s downtown district, where the local utility, the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM), enforces protections to ensure grid reliability in an area that supports a large amount of the city’s critical infrastructure.
When COVID-19 hit in 2020, electricity usage in downtown Albuquerque dropped and has remained below pre-pandemic levels. This shift rendered the solar systems designed in 2019 too large for the reduced demand and out of alignment with PNM’s interconnection rules.
Officials are now considering solutions to address the issue, such as connecting the unused panels to other buildings or relocating them to new projects. The alternative would be leaving the panels idle until energy consumption increases, as projected over the next five years.
Since a typical solar panel’s lifespan is 30 to 35 years, according to the Department of Energy, in this scenario, about a third of these solar panels’ lives would be non-productive.
Despite this setback, Mayor Keller’s administration remains optimistic about reaching its renewable energy goals. To help achieve them, a new measure to install solar panels on 25 additional city buildings outside the downtown area has already received unanimous approval from the finance and government operations committee, and it now awaits a vote from the full City Council.
