This year, we celebrate the 125th anniversary of electricity production in Durango with the 1892 construction of Durango Power & Light, one of the first alternating current power plants in the nation. (The first was in Ames, near Telluride.) The company produced A/C electrical power from coal at their new large brick plant, that is now the Powerhouse Science Center. It was powered by coal until the 1940’s and then by natural gas.
In 1913, Western Colorado Power Company, purchased DP&L and operated until the early 1970’s when La Plata Electric Association purchased WCPC’s power lines and distribution system and provided power to Durango and the Animas Valley.
Over the next couple of decades, the Colorado-Ute Electric Association, which LPEA helped to form, generated our electricity, until 1992 when it entered bankruptcy and was acquired by Tri-State Generation and Transmission, our current wholesale power provider.
In the context of today, at a time when there is a movement to return to local distributed generation via the increased development of renewable energy, particularly solar, the history is interesting and instructive. An arrangement that has been over a century in the making, which is capital intensive – Tri-State is a $1.4 billion a year business – is not going to change overnight.
Tri-State has made investments to generate and transmit power for its 43 member cooperatives that accordingly, because members pay them off over decades, are called generational assets. That is why the agreement that LPEA renewed with Tri-State in 2007 runs until 2050. Tri-State, and LPEA, set its rates on a slow payback period that guarantees reliable and stable power pricing for members, and is why it is so difficult to make a course correction just 10 years into the new agreement. There are still decades of debt to pay off on these assets, and we cannot jump ship now.
But that does not mean that renewable energy advocates should not keep pushing for change, and that LPEA board members and staff should not continue their efforts with Tri-State to increase the percent of energy we can produce locally from 5 to 10 percent (or more), as the board unanimously voted to do in April. It was disappointing, if not understandable, that Kohler McInnis, LPEA and Tri-State board member, appointed to the Tri-State contracts committee, voted against the increase earlier this month.
He was in a difficult position that required he decide between a fiduciary responsibility to avoid possible system-wide rate increases, from reduced demand for existing capacity if more renewables are purchased, and the interests of his local coop for greater local generating capacity, which are not mutually exclusive. Of course, LPEA members care about costs, too, and they should not be the only consideration. We are pleased he requested the committee revisit the issue in a year’s, rather than two year’s, time. A lot of problem-solving can be done between now and then.
We have a small yet robust local solar energy industry that is increasingly cost-competitive, which will help us diversify our energy sources, create more local jobs, move to cleaner sources of power and keep more of our $75 million annual outlay to Tri-State local. It will take some time to figure out this transition, but with half of Tri-State’s coops pursuing renewables, two LPEA renewables workshops under its belt and another planned within the next few months, it appears LPEA’s leadership is committed to navigating this new course.
It is unchartered territory that requires innovative policies and technology, leadership and political will that depends upon community participation. Read up on the issues and watch the June workshop presentation, “Transitioning Toward Renewables,” at lpea.com/education/workshops.html – and stay tuned for more to come.
This editorial was updated on August 3 to correct an error in the history of electricity production in Durango.
