It is owned and operated by Southwestern Public Service Company, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy.

During the initial stages of the design process, no location had been selected, so engineers referred to the generating station simply as “Plant X” and the name stuck.

[1] When the President of Southwestern Public Service Company announced that the company planned to build a new power plant on the high plains of the Llano Estacado, William L. Broadhurst of the Division of Ground Water of the Geological Survey recommended that they build it in the Sand Hills area of Lamb County.

[2] The USGS groundwater program had already determined that there was an unusually large saturated thickness of freshwater in the Ogallala Aquifer beneath the Sand Hills.

As a result, the combined water consumption of Plant X and Tolk Station was reduced by about 180 million gallons per year.