Power on: El Paso Electric's new, natural-gas fired $211 million generator celebrated

The largest power generator at El Paso Electric’s largest power plant is finally online.

The $211 million generator began operating at the end of December, producing enough electricity to supply about 120,000 homes.

The celebration to mark the end of the utility's difficult, six-year road to get it built and online came Thursday during a ribbon-cutting ceremony outside the new addition at the Newman power plant in far Northeast El Paso.

That road included opposition by environmentalists concerned about air pollution and El Paso city officials concerned about the project's cost for customers.

“It’s never, never easy to build a power plant,” Kelly Tomblin, El Paso Electric Chief Executive Officer, told company employees and others gathered under a white tent in front of the building housing the new generator.

But getting the so-called Newman 6, natural-gas-fired, 228-megawatt generator built was even more complicated because of pandemic-tied labor and supply-chain problems, and political opposition, Tomblin said.

The labor problems are the main reason the project's final cost grew to almost $211 million, said Tomblin and David Rodriguez, the company's vice president of energy supply. That’s almost $47 million more than the company’s pre-COVID projection.

Those problems also resulted in the generator going online about six months late.

The Newman plant is located on 175 acres in a mostly undeveloped area at Stan Roberts Sr. Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It's about 2 miles from Chaparral, New Mexico.

El Paso Electric customers will help pay for the new generator with monthly bill surcharges.

Texas residential customers in February began paying an average $2.50 per month surcharge. And utility officials recently filed a new request with state regulators for an additional average $2.50 per month charge.

Southern New Mexico customers aren't being charged because the new generator is only supplying West Texas customers. The company has almost 460,000 customers in both states.

"Our commitment is to keep those increases as low as possible," Tomblin said after the ceremony. But her job, she said, "is not to get the lowest cost, but the lowest, responsible cost."

That means the company needs to build "infrastructure that is appropriate," which, she said, includes gas-fired generators as well as big solar plants. Work will begin Monday on the company's latest, 150-megawatt solar plant in the Fabens area, she noted.

The "divisive" political discourse during the Newman 6 regulatory process pitted traditional power sources against solar, with people being prompted to choose sides, she said.

The company and environmental groups made a settlement in 2021 to allow the project to go forward.

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Rodriguez said Neman 6 "is the latest and greatest and most responsive electric generator" among the utility's 10 generating units in three power plants.

The Mitsubishi generator can power up in 30 minutes compared to 12 to 14 hours for some of the company's old generators, he said. That's important as solar power goes in and out of the electric grid, depending on the sunshine, he said.

The new generator will allow the utility to retire three old generators in use for more than 60 years. Retiring the generators combined with the more efficient Newman 6 generator will reduce the company's water usage about 600 million gallons a year, he said.

Those features make the new generator "an absolute game changer" for this community, Northeast city Rep. Joe Molinar said at the ceremony.

Vic Kolenc may be reached at 915-546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter, now known as X.

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: El Paso Electric officials celebrate newest, largest power generator