CNM Community College

Project Details

Affordable Solar worked with Central New Mexico Community College to design and install a solar-plus-energy- storage system that reduced the campus’ grid energy costs and also substantially reduced their peak demand charges. This project serves a dual purpose to be a state-of-the-art training lab for CNM students in the Electrical Trades Photovoltaic program. One section of the array is designed to be taken apart for the training lab.
The project is the largest energy storage system connected in PNM’s service area.

The overall project consists of 1.3 MW DC of solar on single axis trackers plus a 555 kw / 1110 kWh battery energy storage system consisting of 5 Tesla Powerpack units. The Tesla system, in real time, simultaneously monitors the solar system output and the campus demand in order to determine when to discharge the battery bank and when to charge the batteries.

The solar system is interconnected to PNM’s electric utility grid and generates nearly 3,000,000 kilowatt-hours of clean electricity annually which offsets ~50% of the electricity used by CNM’s West Side Campus.
Project Installed: 2020