The Colorado Independent

Posts Tagged Tri-State Generation and Transmission

San Miguel electric co-op goes green in most recent board election

By | 06.10.09 | 7:47 am

At least one Colorado rural electric co-ops is leaning greener this week after a pro-renewable candidate, former Telluride Mountain Village Mayor Rube Felicelli, beat out incumbent Tony Forrest for a board seat on the San Miguel Power Association.

Wind, solar group prodding Xcel to address transmission “bottleneck”

By | 06.05.09 | 7:49 am

The Governor’s Energy Office has an ambitious goal of expediting the addition of another 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy generation to Colorado’s electricity grid in the next few years, but the single biggest hurdle may be adding the necessary transmission lines.

Representatives of companies building utility-scale renewable projects like the 8-megawatt SunEdison solar plant in Colorado’s San Luis Valley say sun and wind generation facilities can be permitted and built in under two years, but transmission lines can take more than a decade to become reality.

IREA would be exempt from proposed state oversight of electric co-ops

By | 05.28.09 | 7:37 am

One of the ironies of the controversy over proposed Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) oversight of the state’s second largest utility, Tri-State, is that the rural electric co-op arguably most in need of increased state supervision, the IREA, would be unaffected.

Eighteen of the state’s 22 rural electric co-ops (REAs) would be impacted by PUC approval of Tri-State’s integrated resource plans — annual documents that detail the utility’s energy loads — but the IREA (Intermountain Rural Electric Association) and three other co-ops don’t get their power from Tri-State.

Ex-PUC chairman: Tri-State electric co-op could be headed down coal-fired road to ruin

By | 05.28.09 | 7:33 am

Ron Lehr was chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in the early 1990s when the Montrose-based Colorado Ute Electric Association went bankrupt because of what he deemed “a colossal blunder that put them out of business.”

Ritter spokesman on accusation of ‘wet kiss’ for Tri-State power: ‘Let’s smooch away’

By | 05.19.09 | 7:35 am

The push by environmental groups for Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC) oversight of rural electric co-ops (REAs) and the utilities that supply them with power is already shaping up as a key campaign issue in the 2010 governor’s race.