Salt River Project is locking in a major slice of New Mexico wind, signing a deal to buy 600 megawatts of power from Pattern Energy’s SunZia development in central New Mexico. The move will roughly triple SRP’s wind capacity serving the Phoenix-area grid. Under the agreement, SRP will start receiving 400 megawatts this fall and scale up to the full 600 megawatts by the summer of 2027, with electricity riding the new SunZia high-voltage transmission corridor into Arizona. That ties Phoenix customers directly to an approximately $11 billion buildout of turbines and long-distance HVDC infrastructure that is already reshaping power flows across the Southwest.
Deal specifics and timeline
In a press release, Pattern Energy said the Power Purchase Agreement covers 600 megawatts of SunZia output. SRP is slated to take 400 megawatts starting this fall, then increase deliveries to the full 600 megawatts by summer 2027. Pattern Energy noted that SRP currently has about 288 megawatts of wind on its system and described the new contract as one of the largest single renewable offtake agreements in the United States.
SunZia at a glance
The SunZia complex combines roughly 3,650 megawatts of wind generation with a roughly 550 mile, ±525 kilovolt HVDC transmission line that moves power from central New Mexico into Arizona and Southern California, according to the Energy Information Administration. Pattern Energy and earlier financing documents show the paired wind and transmission project required about $11 billion to build, based on prior financing announcements. Because of SunZia’s size, utilities that secure offtake agreements can tap gigawatts of wind that previously sat behind transmission bottlenecks.
What it means for Valley customers
The PPA will more than triple SRP’s wind capacity on the Valley grid, a milestone highlighted by the Phoenix Business Journal. The new wind supply layers on top of SRP’s spring agreement with NextEra Energy Resources to add 3,000 megawatts of solar, part of an ongoing push to expand renewables and storage through the 2030s. SRP officials say large offtake contracts, paired with batteries and other resources, are meant to keep power reliable and relatively affordable as Phoenix-area summer demand keeps climbing.
Grid and policy implications
SunZia’s HVDC corridor is built to move bulk power long distances with lower losses than comparable alternating-current lines, which should help pull large wind resources into the western grid and support evening and overnight demand when solar production falls off. The Energy Information Administration notes that SunZia’s scale and transmission reach could influence when and where gas plants operate across the West, and regulators are expected to watch how those shifting flows play out in wholesale markets and reliability metrics. For Phoenix, the deal adds resource diversity to SRP’s supply mix but also increases exposure to interstate transmission availability and to market rules that govern how imported power is scheduled.
Bobby Olsen, SRP’s Associate General Manager and Chief Power System Executive, called the PPA "a key role in SRP’s all-of-the-above approach" in Pattern Energy’s announcement. Pattern Energy CEO Hunter Armistead framed SunZia as an example that large scale transmission and generation projects can be built to deliver affordable power. Pricing details were not disclosed by SRP or Pattern Energy in the public release; customers are more likely to see the financial impact show up in SRP’s long term resource planning documents and in future rate proceedings.
