Foxtail Flats, Four Mile Mesa solar projects break ground near Kirtland
Two solar-and-storage projects outside Kirtland will feed power to New Mexico customers, including federal facilities, with a spring 2027 target.
Power from two new solar and storage projects near Kirtland will flow through the same San Juan County grid assets once used by the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station, linking tribal land, county territory and private development in one of the largest renewable-energy buildouts the Four Corners has seen.
Leaders from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, San Juan County and private contractors broke ground May 14 on Foxtail Flats and Four Mile Mesa on Ute Mountain Ute land outside Kirtland, marking a milestone years in the making. Together, the projects are reported to total 270 megawatts of solar generation and 180 megawatts of battery storage, with commercial operation targeted for spring 2027.
Foxtail Flats is the larger of the two, a 170-megawatt solar project paired with 80 megawatts of battery storage. It will sit on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, state land and private land about 10 miles northwest of Farmington, and it is designed to interconnect through existing infrastructure tied to D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments’ San Juan Solar 1 project and the retired San Juan Generating Station substation.
That connection matters for San Juan County because it turns an old coal corridor into a new transmission path for renewable power. The projects are expected to deliver clean electricity across New Mexico, and the Foxtail Flats portion is tied to a 20-year power purchase arrangement with local utilities, giving the project a long-term market for its output.
A Los Alamos County announcement said Foxtail Flats was expected to supply Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and Kirtland Air Force Base. That makes the project more than a regional solar field: it is part of the electricity supply chain for major federal facilities while also anchoring new investment on tribal land in San Juan County.
The Ute Mountain Ute Reservation spans parts of southwest Colorado and San Juan County, New Mexico, and tribal leaders have framed solar development as a long-term revenue source and a step toward energy self-sufficiency. The May 14 groundbreaking showed how that strategy is now moving from planning to construction, with tribal, county and private-sector partners aligned around reuse of existing grid infrastructure instead of building a new fossil-fuel system from scratch.
For San Juan County and neighboring tribal communities, the practical shift is already visible: the county’s retired coal assets are being repurposed, and a new generation of power buyers is being lined up around them.
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