News Release

Jan. 21, 2002

PNM's Valencia Station Noise Abatement Project Complete

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NEWS MEDIA CONTACT Susan Sponar Telephone: (505) 241-2768

Las Vegas, N.M.: On Thursday, January 24, PNM will conduct tests on the newly completed sound abatement system at the Valencia Station in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The test will be conducted to determine the amount of sound reduction achieved after a 17-month project to reduce noise at the station. The station will be run at full power for the testing between approximately 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. 

"We expect that the station should run at least fifty percent quieter," said PNM's Matt Lavery, director of power production who oversaw the project. "We want to test the system at various power levels and measure the sound levels at the same neighborhood locations we tested earlier this year. That way, we can see how much the sound has been reduced." 

Test results will be available about six weeks after the testing by about March 1, 2002 at the local PNM office on Railroad Avenue. 

Lavery said the 20-megawatt station, which is large enough to serve the Las Vegas area, needs to be available in case of emergency. The city receives power from PNM's 115,000-volt transmission line from the Santa Fe area. "Winter weather in the Las Vegas area can be pretty rough at times, so if we need to run this station in case a major line goes down, we'll be able to run it much more quietly," he said. 

The project came about as a result of neighbors' concerns about noise when the plant was in operation. "The plant has never been heavily operated," Lavery explained. "In 2000, we operated it three percent of the time, and in the year 2001 we ran it a bit more, about three-and-a-half percent of the time, or 307 hours altogether."

Because of power shortages in the West, PNM is under a federal order issued in December 2000 to provide power to neighboring utilities when they need it. Under that order, power plants cannot sit idle in times of great need. The PNM system is interconnected to other generating stations in the West so that western states can share resources when shortages occur. 

The station last ran for two hours in November 2001 for outage testing. Controls were calibrated and the combustion system was inspected. 

The project to add sound baffles and new muffling to the station totaled about $625,000. 

PNM owns and operates, on behalf of eight other owners, the San Juan Generating Station, a coal-fired unit in the Four Corners area. The company also owns and operates the natural gas-fired Reeves Station, in Albuquerque. It has ownership interest in the Four Corners Power Plant , operated by Arizona Public Service (APS), and in the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Wintersburg, AZ, also operated by APS. 

PNM has a 20-year exclusive contract to purchase all power from the Delta Person Station in Albuquerque, owned by Delta Power. That plant came on-line in July 2000. All resources together provide 1,653 MW of power and is used primarily to provide power to PNM's retail customers in New Mexico. Some power is sold on the wholesale market when it is excess, with PNM customers receiving a portion of those sales.