GE lighting tour makes stop at HQ

Published on April 3, 2012 in Clean Energy, General and Public Outreach. 0 Comments Tags: .

Tri-State’s Westminster-based employees, directors and other membership guests who are at the association’s headquarters to attend the G&T’s 60th annual meeting this week (April 4-5) are invited to visit what General Electric is calling the “largest trade show on wheels,” featuring the latest innovations in state-of-the-art commercial, industrial and residential lighting products.

GE Lighting is bringing its lighting "trade show on wheels" to Tri-State headquarters on Wednesday.

The 53-foot long semi-trailer will be set up in the Westminster employee parking lot from 7 a.m. through 1 p.m. on Wednesday, April 4. This massive mobile lighting display’s Tri-State stop is part of a nearly 17,000-mile tour of 57 cities in the U.S. and Canada.

The goal for the company’s “2012 GE Lighting Revolution Tour” is to spread its message of the new technologies and many energy efficient lighting products that are emerging in the marketplace to a wide audience of people associated with energy and the lighting industry.

Tri-State will be one of five stops that the GE lighting team has scheduled in the Denver area. GE’s lighting technology road show kicked off in late February in Miami, Fla.,  and will conclude on Sept. 20 in Hendersonville, N.C.

‘Spring training’ underway for G&T’s maintenance crews

Published on April 2, 2012 in General and Transmission. 0 Comments Tags: , .

This spring the operative word is “training” for the 173 Tri-Staters comprising the association’s south, west and east maintenance regions that service the G&T’s vast, four-state network of transmission lines, substations and telecommunications sites.

A confined space simulator was added to this year's Competency Week training, which is ongoing through May 9.

Orchestrated by Wayne Martin, Tri-State’s training coordinator is tasked with organizing and scheduling the annual Competency Week multi-location event. This year, the program consists of a series of three-day training windows that kicked off on March 12 at the Rio Rancho, N.M., field facility and will close out on May 9 at the Montrose, Colo., maintenance center.

The training classes are conducted by a total of eight Tri-State and contracted trainers, who provide specialized instruction for each of Tri-State’s transmission, substation and telecommunications personnel. Logistically speaking, that’s no small feat considering the geography of Tri-State’s maintenance crews, which are stationed at field offices across the four-state service area. Continue reading ‘‘Spring training’ underway for G&T’s maintenance crews’

Tri-State Senior VP provides Congressional testimony on regulations

Published on March 29, 2012 in General and Public Meetings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Earlier this year, Barbara Walz,  Tri-State’s senior vice president for member relations and external affairs, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce regarding regulations affecting private businesses.

The hearing occured on February 16 and included discussion on cost implications that EPA regulations are having on Tri-State’s mission to provide affordable and reliable electricity to its 44 member co-ops.

Latest issue of Network magazine features Colowyo mine, sixth graders

Published on March 29, 2012 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The latest edition of Tri-State’s quarterly magazine – Network – is hot off the presses.  The spring 2012 edition includes a feature on Colowyo Mine, which was recently acquired by Tri-State as a long-term fuel source for the G&T.

Also featured is a unique energy-efficiency project by Tri-State member Morgan County REA (Fort Morgan, Colo.) that involves $1,000 saved per month for a family-run dairy near Wiggins, Colo. Readers will also learn how sixth graders at a school in Hotchkiss, Colo., took part in a national competition to create a real-life learning experience based on energy. The school is served electrically by Delta-Montrose Electric Association (Montrose, Colo.).

A message on celebrating the cooperative spirit from Ken Anderson, Tri-State’s executive vice president and general manager, and coverage of recent carbon capture activity at Trapper Mine are also included in the current issue. Network magazine is Tri-State’s quarterly publication that tells the stories of the people and communities of the G&T and its 44 member rural electric cooperatives. The current issue of Network magazine, as well as past issues, can be found on Tri-State’s Internet site.

Colowyo, New Horizon mines garner awards

Published on March 28, 2012 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The employees of Western Fuels-Colorado (WFC), a 99 percent-owned subsidiary of Tri-State, have plenty to be proud of as recipients of several safety and environmental milestone awards for their operations at the New Horizon Mine near Nucla and the Colowyo Mine north of Meeker.

Both Colowyo (shown) and New Horizon mines received awards for safety and environmental stewardship recently by the Colorado Mining Association.

The awards, presented by the Colorado Mining Association (CMA) last week (March 20-22) at the 114th National Western Mining Conference in Denver, recognized both New Horizon and Colowyo mines for incurring no lost time incidents in 2011. For those distinctions and other safety efforts, the Colowyo Mine was the recipient of CMA’s Safest Surface Coal Mine Award and the New Horizon Mine was lauded for garnering CMA’s Excellence in Safety Award. In addition, both mines received CMA’s Environmental Stewardship Pollution Prevention Program Award for 2011.

The Colowyo Mine was purchased in December 2011 by WFC from Rio Tinto Group. It is the state’s largest surface coal mine, employing a workforce of 249. All the coal produced at this mine – 2.3 million tons a year – is transported by rail to Craig Station. The 1,311-megawatt Tri-State-operated power plant also burns coal mined from the nearby Trapper Mine.

The New Horizon Mine, which is the exclusive fuel supplier to Tri-State’s 100-megawatt Nucla Station, employs 28 WFC personnel. Developed and opened in 1993, this surface coal mine uses dozers, trucks and shovels to extract approximately 400,000 tons of coal a year for the nearby plant. The mined coal is then transported over the road to the plant (about 9 miles) using haul trucks.

Tri-State supports ‘One Book, One MCHS’ event

Published on March 26, 2012 in General and Public Outreach. 0 Comments Tags: .

No one among the group of 70-plus staff members and students of Moffat County (Colo.) High School went hungry recently, when the group convened to discuss “The Hunger Games,” thanks to a Subway sandwich lunch delivery provided by Tri-State.  Participating in the “One Book, One MCHS” effort to promote reading at the school, the students and teachers all completed reading the New York Times bestselling novel then got together to discuss the book.  Pictured among some of the students are school librarians James Neton (standing) and Robin Weible (seated at right).

Affordability team, Tri-State’s Volt at Denver Auto Show this weekend

Published on March 23, 2012 in Clean Energy, General and Public Meetings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Denver area-based employees may want to check out the Denver Auto Show, running through this weekend at the Colorado Convention Center, where a Keep Electricity Affordable (KEA) booth is set up and fully staffed to engage and educate visitors about the potential threats to affordable electricity.  Visitors to the booth also can get a look at Tri-State’s latest addition to its hybrid and plug-in electric vehicle fleet – the Chevy Volt.

KEA is an alliance of citizens and organizations in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming that believes affordable electric power is an indispensable resource and is essential to families, businesses, communities and the economy.

Tri-State's new Chevy Volt is on display at the Keep Electricity Affordable booth set up at this week's Denver Auto Show.

Sponsors of this initiative include Tri-State, its 44 member systems and the rural electric statewide associations in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming. This weekend at the show, the KEA team is encouraging visitors to sign up in support of the initiative’s efforts to raise awareness of threats to affordable electricity.

The Denver Auto Show is the region’s premier showcase of the newest model year import and domestic vehicles — including cars, vans, crossovers, hybrids, light trucks and SUVs. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for kids (ages 6-12) and children under 6 are admitted free of charge. Car show hours are noon to 10 p.m. on Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.

Misguided emissions rules repealed in New Mexico

Published on March 20, 2012 in General, Public Meetings and Resource Planning. 0 Comments Tags: .

With staff from Tri-State’s Environmental Services and Communications & Public Affairs groups in attendance, the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) this past Friday (March 16) repealed the last of four misguided regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The unanimous 5-0 vote – with two EIB members recusing themselves – is considered a regulatory victory for the nearly 200,000 residential, agricultural and business member-owners of Tri-State’s 12 member cooperatives in New Mexico.

Tri-State's Escalante Station would have been one New Mexico facility impacted by the recently repealed carbon regulations.

Adopted in 2010, the first three regulations sought to impose a cap-and-trade system; that set of rules was repealed earlier this year by the EIB. The fourth regulation would have imposed a hard emissions cap that would have required power plants and other carbon emitters statewide to cut CO2 releases by three percent per year beginning in 2013. As several expert witnesses testified, however, the rule would have had few tangible benefits for the environment and little or no influence in encouraging other state or federal regulators to enact greenhouse gas initiatives of their own.

What the rules would have done is hurt small businesses, families and agricultural producers from many of the poorest parts of New Mexico. Tri-State’s own estimates predicted that imposition of the 2010 regulations would have caused the state’s GDP to decline by $317 million to $1.3 billion through 2030 and employment to generate 322 to 1,511 fewer jobs by 2020 – all while causing, at best, only a 0.004 percent to 0.006 percent average annual reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Tri-State was joined by several partners in opposing the regulations and working to secure their repeal, including staff and members from the New Mexico Rural Electric Cooperative Association, New Mexico Oil & Gas Association, the City of Farmington, PNM, El Paso Electric and more than 18,000 followers of the Keep Electricity Affordable campaign who made their voices heard.

Members adding three local renewable sources

Published on March 16, 2012 in Clean Energy, Renewable Energy and Resource Planning. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The association’s board of directors approved Policy 115 generation contracts between Tri-State and two of its member systems for a total of three renewable projects at the March board meeting held earlier this week (March 13-14) in Westminster.

Both Poudre Valley REA and San Miguel Power are adding community solar projects to their porfolios this summer.

At Poudre Valley REA (Fort Collins, Colo.), the co-op recently announced the development of a 100-kilowatt solar garden by Clean Energy Collective, LLC, to be constructed this summer adjacent to the co-op’s headquarters building in Fort Collins. Under the terms of the agreement, Clean Energy Collective will own and operate the solar site and sell the output to Poudre Valley. The co-op, in turn, will provide its member-consumers with the opportunity to purchase solar panels to offset their electric use.

Within the service territory of San Miguel Power Association (Nucla, Colo.), a larger scale – one megawatt – community solar project, in which its members will be invited to subscribe, is also being developed this summer by the aforementioned Clean Energy Collective. The solar facility will be constructed in the Paradox Valley, west of Nucla.

Also, being added to San Miguel’s renewable portfolio is the 500-kilowatt output of one of the nation’s oldest hydroelectric facilities. Constructed in the late 1800s, the owners of Bridal Veil Hydro Project near Telluride, Colo., have inked a power purchase agreement with the Nucla-based co-op that is scheduled to begin by the end of this month and extend through the end of 2026.

 

Public outreach meetings held for Burlington-Wray line

Published on March 12, 2012 in Public Meetings and Transmission. 0 Comments Tags: .

Last week, Tri-State staff from public affairs, land rights, transmission engineering and the GIS group hit the road to eastern Colorado to hold public outreach meetings with local landowners, county commissioners, community leaders and other interested parties to discuss the association’s proposed 230-kilovolt transmission line between the towns of Burlington and Wray.

Local landowners check out maps of the proposed routing for the Burlington to Wray transmission project at public meetings held last week in eastern Colorado.

The meetings, held at the Burlington Community Center on March 6 and the Wray Roundhouse on March 7, attracted about 60 attendees at each venue.

“The existing transmission system in this area is strained as a result of increased electricity demand and new generation resources, so the project is clearly needed,” said Drew Kramer, Tri-State’s public affairs manager. “At the same time, public input is a critical and ongoing part of this project because there are several proposed route segments, and we want to minimize the impact on landowners and accommodate their concerns to the degree possible,” he said.

While no formal presentations were provided at the meetings, the open house format provided the meeting attendees with opportunities to view the proposed route segments on detailed maps and, with the help of Tri-State’s GIS group, landowners could even look at a custom map of their specific properties in relation to the various proposed line corridors.

The next step in the proposed project will be route refinement meetings, which are likely to be held this summer. The new line is expected to be constructed in 2014 and energized near the end of 2015.