Report: RioSol project will support thousands of jobs, hundreds million impact

The other portion of what could become the largest renewable energy project in the Western Hemisphere could create thousands of jobs in New Mexico and Arizona and have a $667 million economic impact in New Mexico, according to a study released last week.

Developers of the RioSol project last week released an economic impact study that was done by Moss Adams. The firm's study founds the project will cost $2.4 billion and create about 2,600 jobs, including 1,600 construction jobs as well as long-term jobs. There will be an estimated economic impact of $667 million in New Mexico and $506 million in Arizona, according to the study.

The economic impact is an estimate from when the project started being conceptualized in 2006 through its 30 years of operational life.

RioSol is a parallel line to the SunZia Transmission Project that is currently under construction. The two transmission lines will transfer different currents of power.

John Ryan works for SouthWestern Power Group, which is developing the project project. He is the executive director in New Mexico.

RioSol originally included the SunZia Transmission Project, which was renamed SunZia when Patten Energy purchased that portion of the project in 2022. The projects has been in development since 2006 and the SunZia portion of the project finally broke ground in September 2023 after years of permitting delays.

The two transmission lines are planned to stretch 550 miles from Torrance County to Pinal County, Arizona. The will run parallel to each other for the vast majority of the trip, Ryan said.

The SunZia line will have a 3 gigawatt capacity and the RioSol line will send 1.5 gigawatt capacity of power across the two states.

The Rio Sol portion is a High Voltage Alternating Current and SunZia is a High Voltage Direct Current. SunZia is expected to be completed in 2026 and then construction will start on RioSol portion, which is expected go online in 2028, Ryan said.

Ryan said there are pros and cons to the two types of transmission lines. He said a direct current has to be converted to an alternative current before it's distributed to a utility so the power can get to homes and businesses. Those conversion substations are expensive.

"So when you have a DC line, you want it to be a long stretch of line," he said. "There's advantage to a DC line in that it has less load loss, so it can carry a lot more capacity than an alternating current."

An alternating current transmission line will be easier to distribute to utilities. Ryan said the RioSol line will have multiple interconnections along the route to provide power to local communities.

"We're talking to a lot of New Mexico utilities and a lot of Arizona utilities as potential customers," Ryan said. "There's a lot of interest."

Ryan said that because construction on the RioSol line is expected to start when the SunZia line is finished, developers are hoping to use some of the same construction workers.

Both transmission lines will be powered from wind farms and solar energy projects in New Mexico near the eastern terminus of the route. Ryan said those developments don't take as long as the transmission line to build, so the RioSol transmission line will likely break ground before the power source does.

“RioSol provides us an opportunity to create more jobs in the building trades and lower costs for working families, while bringing us closer to meeting our ambitious climate goals," Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said in a statement. "I’m proud to support this project and will continue fighting to further solidify New Mexico’s lead role in the transition to our clean energy future.”