Members of electric co-op have reason to rebel

Never heard of Tri-State? Then better listen up. If you live in Rio Arriba County or in the service area of 10 other electric cooperatives, your electricity is supplied by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc., a cooperative of cooperatives with 43 electric co-op members in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and part of Nebraska. Ideally this would be a good arrangement. Co-ops are bound to serve the interests of their members. Right?

But in fact Tri-State is acting against the interests of some of its largest members, representatives of which gathered for an all-day conference at Cities of Gold in Pojoaque last month. Some years ago, Tri-State maneuvered its members into 40-year supply contracts. One of the singularly punitive conditions of the contract was to limit member co-ops to installing facilities that produced no more than 5 percent wind or solar energy.

Back in the day this was not a big deal — in their infancy, wind and solar were still expensive. Coal was by far the cheapest. And coal is what TriState is deeply invested in.

But guess what? Wind- and solargenerated electricity is now cheaper than coal and even natural gas, and prices continue to drop. But Tri-State’s 43 member co-ops are locked into coal and are unable to take advantage of lower power costs offered by renewable-centric suppliers like Excel and Guzman Energy. And the member co-ops are unable to install wind and