El Paso Electric

El Paso Electric Adds Solar Facility to its Power Generation

On October 28, El Paso Electric celebrated the addition of the 52 kiloWatt (kW) Wrangler Solar Facility to its power generation mix.  The facility is located in East El Paso and is part of a $10 million commitment that El Paso Electric made to build more solar power in the region.

“El Paso residents will be seeing more solar facilities in our landscape.  These projects will increase El Paso Electric’s renewable energy portfolio to 50 MW by the end of 2012,” said Rocky Miracle, Senior Vice President of Corporate Planning and Development at El Paso Electric.  Projects, like the Wrangler Solar Facility will allow EPE to be at the forefront of the solar energy industry, which is fitting given our location and abundance of the solar resource.”

The Wrangler Solar Facility sits on 32,400 square feet located in El Paso’s Eastside.  The site was constructed by Solar Smart Living.  The facility utilizes Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) equipment provided by SolFocus.  CPV is an emerging technology gaining a foothold in the growing solar energy market.  The technology utilizes small, multi-junction cells with higher efficiencies than conventional crystalline panels.  Mirrors concentrate the sunlight onto the cells at 650 times the existing concentration and utilize dual-axis tracking to continuously track the sun.   The facility has 6 arrays with a total of 168 panels resulting in a total of 3,360 multi-junction cells.