Expect a formal announcement this week that California company eSolar will build a solar energy plant in Southern New Mexico to supply power to El Paso Electric.

ESolar (Is that how I capitalize it when it starts a sentence?) is partnering with NRG on the project. ESolar, a California startup financed in part by Google's non-profit foundation Google.org, brings the technology to the table. NRG is a major power wholesaler.

It will be the second large solar power plant project to be announced. Tri-State is partnering with First Solar to build a photovoltaic plant in northeast New Mexico.

Those two plants are the farthest along, but there are an additional seven solar plant proposals pending before the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. As my colleague Michael Coleman reported last week, Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., is sponsoring legislation to eliminate a bureaucratic problem that left BLM without the resources to process the applications. With the proposed Sun Zia power line, which could carry NM colar and wind power to growing markets in Arizona and California, expect more news along these lines in the future.