Xcel Energy and SunEdison broke ground today on a 54-megawatt solar project in Eastern New Mexico that will help Xcel achieve state renewable energy portfolio standards for power providers.

New Mexico requires energy suppliers to get 15 percent of the power they provide from renewable sources by 2015.

“With this project, we are OK to meet that goal,” said Xcel spokesman Wes Reaves. “There’s also a diversity requirement that starts in 2011, and with this solar installation, we’re also going to meet that.”

The state requires that providers get 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Reaves said he didn’t know where the company stood in terms of reaching that goal.

“But we do have another decade to pull that together,” he said. “The one thing is that we have a lot of renewable potential here in this state.”

Xcel has developed some wind resources and has a few small-scale solar projects in different communities around the southeastern part of the state. But this is the largest solar project the utility has developed in the area.

Xcel partnered with SunEdison in Alamosa, Colo., to a build an eight-megawatt solar installation earlier this year, according to a press release.

The new solar project consists of five separate solar arrays being installed in five different locations in Lea and Eddy.

The new arrays are located near power-distribution centers in order to eliminate a lot of the transmission problems sometimes associated with new clean-energy projects, Reaves said.

SunEdison is building, financing and maintaining the photovoltaic installations and selling the power back to Xcel under a 20-year contract.

The groundbreaking brought elected officials, community members and those interested in the new energy developments in the area out to the site at the Woolworth Community Library in Jal, N.M.

"I commend SunEdison and Xcel Energy for locating this sustainable energy project in southeast New Mexico," State Senator Caroll Leavell said at the event, according to a press release. "Lea and Eddy counties embrace oil, gas and nuclear, and this will further diversify our local economy as well as the energy security of the nation.

The project is expected to generate more than 2 million megawatt hours of energy over its 20 years—enough to power 192,000 average American homes, according to the press release.

Image courtesy of Xcel Energy.