Community Power X: Celebrating Energy Independence

(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, it's Monica Vic, your host of Southwest Power Stories. (upbeat music) For this episode, we're going back in time. To April, 2026, when we gathered right around Earth Day at the Durango Art Center for Community Power X, we were there to celebrate two of Laplata Electric's biggest milestones in co-op history. - The board refined our strategic goal and again to still to down to really one goal with two parts. Part number one is I've got to work hard with the team at your co-op to the lower price than 70% of our peers. And then by 2030 to meet the state of Colorado requirements and we're going to beat that. But the idea is that we're going to reduce our emissions from 2005 levels by at least 80%. So those are the two goals, those are the two goals. - That's Chris Hanson, LPEA CEO. He kicked off our spring community power ex after an introduction from Nicole Pitcher, president of the Laplata Electric Board of Directors. - We now have an opportunity to make that connection, a stronger connection between place and power that was a possible prior to our energy and pendants. I keep coming back to this simple thought. Our cooperative was founded with local decision-making and a connection to resources close to home. That now we have this opportunity to create the powers of future power supply while taking in the priorities of our members of our communities when we wait things like cost and emissions and taking care of this place we call home. I think that in a nutshell, this moment, we're going back to what it was that made us so successful as a cooperative 80 by years ago. And that's local control and that's practical solutions and having an informed and engaged membership. So with that, I would like to hand the mic off to the person who is leading this work every day. He's going to connect this moment for our cooperative and for our region that is our CEO, Chris Hanson. (applause) - In addition to celebrating milestones at Community Power X, we honored our lineman for their service and even played a round of lineman two truths in the lie. - I competed in the championships in Hawaii for iron entrance law. - Huh? - Yes, Chris. - I've been struck by lightning. (laughter) - I've been struck by lightning. (laughter) - Among the highlights of Community Power X was a panel of CEOs who joined us in Durango from other co-ops in our region, sharing their advice from the trail. - We are now excited to bring up our main event, our panelists, colleagues and friends from around the region. So welcome to the stage. First across is Luis Ace. His join us for Kick Carson at the Tows. So glad that Luis could be here. Jack Johnson, joining us for Montrose. Been CEO there for three, three and a half. Three and a half. It's like asking a toddler how well they are. Three and a half. (laughter) And then we got Hank there, and we're going for our next door later down the farm. So gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us today. (applause) And it's been really fun. I'm a year and a half into this job. So I got one Porsche five. And it's really great to get to know these three gentlemen's better. I'd love Jack and use a little bit before and my old job. And it's great to get to know Hank over the last year and a half or so. And we're going to just kick it off here with a few questions to get us started and a chance to learn from our neighbors. And one of the things that unites the panel tonight is that we're all now in a pretty similar position. They are all independence, your municipal or co-op utility, and make similar changes to our whole signal power agreements and arrangements. And we're now all getting used to being in the regional power curve. So that would be another, I said now, the two big things that happened to us. Well, very similar for these three gentlemen and their respective co-ops or duties. So I'm going to kick things off with kind of question for everybody. Get to know you a little bit better. What first drew you to this work? And what keeps you going as we're in a moment of a lot of change? Yeah, so Jack, do you want to kick it off? Well, thank you for being here. We appreciate the opportunity to be around like many individuals and it can create selection in Chris each of his experience in well as poor down in these states and you're benefiting from that. But actually, I had experienced an IOU world as well as a municipal world, a reigning world. And then I actually was elected as a director and another Colorado cooperative, San Isbel Electric. And that's what opened my eyes to the whole lecture cooperative business, business model. Never see you be liked at that experience in both media and especially IOU. And just was drawn to it immediately when the opportunity came up to go on the other side of the board table. I jumped at it and I have never looked back. And I was with the Southeast Colorado Power seven years prior to DBA. So I have both an East slope and a West slope perspective. But the West slope is the best slope. Yeah, thank you. For your start, you know, in a shout-out to alignment, you guys are already back on the business. And so when I present, thank you guys for all the work you do, especially during those times where we do the power on hour. Oh, whip. So I'm from Texas, Kickharsson, Micric, and I broke into house. I've been with the co-op 42 years. I've been the CEO 33 years. So the drives me is really, I wanted to get back to the community. And very few people have a chance to come back to your hometown, to their families and friends, and really make a difference. And I've always had this kind of idea that real people can always be better. And so I wanted to use that the co-op as an instrument to enhance the quality of life for the people that we serve. And so that really would drive me every single day. So how can I make it better with those who serve? Even if it's one day just helping someone pay their bill. So that's what drives me is really even that to a community that helped raise me through one years. You'll probably are coming through it through all of this. And so fresh out of college, I had options for job offers. One was to become an R&D person for Hoover Backing Clean. Paso Texas. The second one was with Intel. And they wanted me to iron for four years and set up factories at the factory in the Ireland area. And then the fourth was of an investor owned utility that was here, post to home, in the Farmington area. I am an idiot, you're an idiot. I'll say that. But I wanted-- so I looked and I was dating somebody. We cannot be on say. I learned was that of the picture. And I just didn't think backing cleaners were where I wanted to dispute. So then I joined that investor utility as a young project engineer. And what I loved was the symphony of it is electric utilities, how everything has to interact and how one cause and what you can do can have an effect. And I like fixing things. And what I really like about it and what you'll see throughout these utilities is you build it for the short term that you make at last for the long term. That's the operations of maintenance people and have to take care of it once you finish cutting that ribbon. And that's the focus you need to have. Because they'll make it reliable for your community on the go forward. The same thing for how you build, how your construction standards are, for how you build poles, transmission, how you do maintenance. The schedule, how your hot line holds, which you probably hear. A lot of how that is with smart reclosers and things that you recently heard from Alignment, what they wrote, they wrote, the platic, and fixed things. So what I left was being part of that investor on utility. But then there was a point in time after 25 years that it's like, I wanna do that as part of my community. And you see that comment through that. You know, being a municipality would govern not by state legislation, we're not governed by a state DRC, we're governed by our community, by our city council. And we have 17 done a square miles. And so we had the vision to set up our own utility commission. And what we live and breathe in is our mission and vision is farming to an electric. That's the compass that drives us in all our decisions, right? That's what your mission and vision is. It's a compass at how you fund home. And I love that that's directed by our community. And that's what makes it special to me. - We're probably going to have a lot. - And that's what draws me to. - All right, I'm gonna go to our, the longest tenure. - Most experience on the stage next. So Luis, you may have a decision along with your board at 2016. to make a pretty major change, similar to the one that we were talking about tonight. Do you just share with our members here in the room, what went into that decision, how you decided to make that change in 2016, and how it's laid out for your members? - So, thank you for that question. So we actually started talking about this, probably in 2006 or '7, actually with Nelson Montrose. We didn't like that some of the decisions that the word is making around power supply. Our members didn't have a chance to participate in that discussion as members. And those days we couldn't even get a member, for tiles to even go to a tri-state board meeting. And so we felt isolated. And we were, you know, we tried out to make some noise and we were told to work within the system, to work within the system, and we were working within the system, they started to just build more fossil fuel generation. And we understand the value of baselites, right? It's not that we want to go so far to one side, we just didn't have a say back home. And so, I started, we started to get a lot of flak, we're not standing up for our members. And so around 2013 we decided kind of set, you are the line set, you know, tricep, we need to change the way we govern this organization. So the members of Kickarson have a voice. And we may not get the boat all the time, at least we have a voice to put our opinion. Working within the system didn't work. And so we decided, do negotiation, but that's one of the one differences that we've had versus other calls is to lead. And so we were the first co-op, probably in the country to leave their G&T that wasn't litigated. And didn't have to get further cutirties or any of that. We sat with the board, or exec from the tri-state, do several meetings, negotiate an exit, and then let. So in July 1 of 2016, we decided, that's when we met, we decided, probably in 2014, that this was not going to work for us. And when I say yes, it wasn't working for our members. And we had a lot of engagement with our members. What kind of power supply do you want? What's more important pricing? What type of power supply? So a lot of discussion. We have very diverse, you know, Tows is a lot by Durango, but we have Angel Fire very inservative, Red River. We have two tribes that have a whole different view of what they want, sovereignty. And so we met. And it was kind of the lowest, when we left, you know, my biggest disappointment, the honest was, the other 43 co-ops were mad at us were trying to do what our members wanted. Think about that, we basically said, it's really a number of business with our numbers one. Just kind of leave us alone, but that did happen. And so we, we, on the power spire, or through the process, on the power spire. And again, for the state reasons of Christmas, and we wanted some raised stability during the times that we would try to say, we had, you know, 10 increased in 12 years, put a lot of pressure on us to raise our rents, 'cause we had to raise our distribution rates, and we just couldn't put that double bird on our members. We decided to pay off our exit in six years. We wanted to get out of this obligation pretty quick. And then what we did is we brought the power spire into town and for three days we had our power spire talked to the members, so they understood what the members want. Not really what I wanted, or even what the board want, but what the members want. As we set some specific goals, those goals were first, the first fire board poll, we understand any coal and natural gas for night time and cloudy days. We want 100% solar. And so during the day time. So we set on our on our tracks. We put it as much solar as we could of batteries, but really engaged the members in this kind of journey. And so we fast-forward in 2022, we paid off our exit fee. In 2022, we actually became a 100% day-type solar. (audience applauds) We also adopted a Disturge model, so we didn't build a big 100 megawatt array somewhere. Our members wanted to really see where the harvest ends. We put a lot of, which drove the cost up, and then we went back to the members and built smaller arrays than a cost other didn't it? We did it with that word, and you just built a bigger array. And so we did that, I think. And so we've hit those goals of back gate. We had too much solar. And it gives you other problems now because we have too much solar. Well, we have batteries now, and we're building a long duration hydrogen projects. So we can have a three-day storage facility. With the cost-based consumables at Christ, a highlight, what can I be, 90% around the cost, we're in an old by 2030. We'll have our carbon will be reduced to 2005 levels of our 20s. Our rates on the wholesale cyber fixed. So the rate I paying today is the same rate I'm paying in 2040. - Wow. - And so I guess part of it is we can accomplish this at the small, and we're 31,000, so we're not even in the medium size. But so the small clock can do this. A larger clock can. I think the key to our success has been engaging the members. It's making sure the members understand the pros and cons about anything we do. And then once we decide to do it, then we're all together. So we're now on our kind of mass stage. And this week, my career is how much storage can we get? And then how can we address the issues of our impact in where the Mexico is using those assets? But the guests, you know, it's been a great journey. It's given the board a lot of independence on what's best for their members. We're not having to be childhood by other co-ops in the region of what's best for the members, what's best for us. But at the end of the day, it's really given the members. We've given the call back to the members. And I think that's important, because that's how they started in '37. It was a bunch of ranches of farmers decided. And since his vessel utilities won't serve us, look, we'll get together, we'll do it ourselves. He's so princess, and it's kind of our store. - Thanks a lot. - That's a real good shoot. (audience applauds) - Great, I would call nice things, Jack, I'd like to ask you basically the same question. Yeah, I'd tell us a little bit about Joe E.H. Trinity. - Kudos to Kit Carson because you really did blaze a path for those tri-state members. And we're willing to take on that fight at the time. And for the right reasons, we'll repeat all of them. But certainly, governance was an issue. I mean, for a cooperative, if a cooperative, be a member of a cooperative, it didn't have a cooperative spirit. And that's one thing that had been lost. And tri-state got too big to be able to have a system that allowed co-ops to be a member, for tri-state to be a member-driven organization. So, you know, we were, you know, Kit Carson, four years later, July 1st, 2020, where you now, we all looked the same and all one of the same things going in to our exit of tri-state and what we're looking for. We took a little bit different path. We liked the bigger arrays. We went with larger solar facility, we just brought on an AMAWF facility this past year. We also had the ability to hydro. And so we have one of the unique hydro generation facilities, probably in the nation, because we have the uncomprivileged and we've got the rest war just to throw it from us. So we have, you know, nine megawatts of solar. And that was a crux for us. And probably the legion that got us out of tri-state, I mean, circling the 5% limitation on local generation. Had there been some more flexibility at the time, then I think the story could have been different. But because of that 5%, we were able to maximize that hydro for ourselves. So we ended up maximizing the hydro, and having a PPA of it to other entities when we would have preferred to have that on our own. So that, I think that piece there is the key part of that is that we couldn't, we couldn't even with the resource that just hide in our unique, take full advantage of that. Now, since, you know, tri-state just wasn't adaptable. Now, they've since adapted, but they didn't see the dynamics of the market and then didn't understand the basic principles that we've always mentioned, which is these are memory-driven orientations. And now, our board and our staff can do things and look in the eyes of our community members and say, we're doing this here for you. This is what you want and we're gonna accomplish it, Query. - Thanks, Chuck. (audience applauds) [BLANK_AUDIO] It exists in a slightly different position, but also a journey over the last few years, as we all enter into the Southwest Power Pool together. Do you want to share a few thoughts on what that looked like for Farming's year? Yeah, our journey has been a little bit different. We've been doing our own for Polio Generations for the 60-hundred years. Actually, the 60-century '02, where we became a municipal utility in 1961. Our generation assets, we built internally, so we actually have about 60% of our own internal generation. That's on a megawatt hour basis, so you could talk capacities and availability factors. So megawatt hours is how many megawatt hours you eat for a whole year, for all those hours at the time. We cover about 60% of our generation. I would say we were part of the coal facility that was on generating station, that retired in 2022. We also have a natural gas buyer facilities for our generation assets, and we also own two hydro-generation facilities that are at Navajo Dam and discharge you to San Juan River. We also have one hydro facility. It's 200 kilolodis from 1929 with wooden bearings that we actually keep that active and run flow through it off of a dish to keep our water rights to go with it. And it's a great piece, it's a great story, you'd see. So those are a piece of what it is. We have that longstanding history that's in our utility. So we built that much, and we're building more, we built a new generation asset at 18 megawatt with natural gas that came online this year. It's fast acting, it's a very reciprocating engine, so they can balance with what the energy markets are, like RTA, how we bring it in and out, it also balances with renewables or variability within our resources. Then includes both our generation assets and our load, because we actually have some very large compressor waves, they can come on and off-line, so it's good to respond or up quickly. We're also building solar and battery storages we speak to go online next year, so we've got a kid balance portfolio, nonetheless to be buy in the market. And now that we join the regional transmission organization, it's changed the philosophy of your existing generation assets and how we look at the market for other assets. And so our utility, you know, the historical large units were base loaded, we set it and forget it, but you would be operated by an operator up to full load and then they would settle it in and then they would watch alarms to keep it and maximize it. And so what has changed the most philosophies, that's the way we rent our existing natural gas, fire generation assets, now that they're in the market, the market has enough variability that we would put in our units and we may not run our units as much, and maybe cheaper to lower the generation out of our units of the RTO market and buy on the market and operate. So our operators are spending, there was more busier for the last day, would say great weeks than they've done over the last previous years, but what's great about it is we have great talent this. Now, when you look at the portfolio, I mentioned again, each utility that you see a friend of you here, we're governed by you to our members, our owners, as we call public power, our owners and now that drives them. And so really, that's where our portfolio came from. How the market is working, that's the great opportunity, is to take advantage of that in the market. For example, yesterday in the RTO, I looked at the graph of the resources in RTO and 22% wind. We don't have a ledger, right? That would be on the eastern side of our in New Mexico state or other places. So when does a part of that portfolio is driving down our carbon footprint, that's a benefit of being in the RTO is that. One of the other things of a regional transmission organization is transmission. So it allows you to reach out and have additional costs if I was to buy it for, say, Oklahoma. I don't have to talk to three different utilities and pay their fees to get like a toll on a freeway with their costs to get it home to our customers. That standardize kind of a systematic rate, which opens the relic adds to the utilities that talk to other people they want to talk to before to lower prices for our community. And being public power, I'm very happy to say we have the lowest rates in the area that I know of, and that is driven by our community focus, how we manage our portfolio and how we take the lead the faith under the RTO. Okay? Thank you. [Applause] You just said that you think up on one of the points Hank mentioned, we're seeing things in a very similar way. As Hank mentioned, pretty tough to build wind farm in Southwest Colorado, northern part of Mexico and northwestern part of Mexico, but lots of opportunity in Eastern Plains. And now we're in St. Grid as all of those places. And so we can get that delivered here and that's one of the things that we're evaluating right now. Sounds like very similar to Hank's outlook. All right. Let's move on to a couple other questions. I'm going to go to another one on our list here, which is what's a concept in today's energy landscape that is often misunderstood. So the question you might get, your members on occasion, or a concept that you find yourself having to explain to your members or met their stakeholders, anything come to my event is commonly misunderstood. In order to jump that, what speak up from my board discussion is Davis Center's, first of all, he's a very hot topic right now. And I think they're commonly misunderstood from the electricity perspective. I think a lot of that gets, I think, mirrored in the water usage or unawaited or much more impactful community issues, I mean, loads or loads. We have obligation to serve what we certainly would. And so I think sometimes they're misunderstood. RTO is misunderstood and I think a lot of boards are, I see, that I speak to and are grappling with, why does this make sense and why, incrementally, it's going to reduce our power costs. But on an aggregate basis, we have these things called resource adequacy now that we're all obligated to fulfill, which has been a major cost as well. So where's the balance there? It doesn't make sense, but I think sometimes it gets misunderstood. Local generation, either I think sometimes it's the ability to have local control or local decision making and how your power supply mix is fulfilled is different than having all the local generation here visible. I mean, that's amazing and 62% of it's right there and you're generating it. But for most of us, that's going to be having some strong partners, some strong partners, like you've seen in your power supply mix. We had with a shared partner in Guzman, energy and otherwise a strong transmission partner and then a strong community effort and engagement to get to where you want to be. I guess I have on on the lighter side of the word capacity. I have so many questions that come from capacity. And capacity can be from an energy standpoint and there's energy, which is what has actually been used and what is there. And I like it capacity is in your reserves, what you mean for your reserve, aren't you in for resource adequacy. So energy is basically the base bottle layers that are actually playing on a field that are used and being functioning at the time and capacities the players that are in the dugout that are ready to come up for a moment's notice with their unit. The other way you'd be capacity in terms of capacity factor, an availability factor. It's like you'll hear sellers available 99% of the time and then you hear sellers available 27% of the time. Well, it's available when the sun shining or capacity factor and then how well it functions when the sun is shining, availability factor. So capacity always is confused. >> Can you see it? Anything comes from on? >> I think just how the grid is so interconnected, but I think people are chowns that something that happens in Elbacrukey could impact us in tax and I think just that whole idea of how this national grid is so interconnected and the storm in Texas can impact our rates and our ability to get power in New Mexico. And so I think that's something that I think we all are chowns about how does this grid work and I think the other thing is how expensive it's going to be to upgrade. >> Yeah. And I think people don't really understand the cost it's going to take to get a more modern grid. >> Yeah, I love that last one because, you know, we've under invested as a nation in our career, the last, arguably the last 30 years at least. And there's definitely catch up that is, is he'll need to happen and you're right. There's a significant cost associated with that across the country. >> I want to kind of do that and think about our region as a whole. What are some ways you think our neighborhood can lead in the electricity sector and in this important set of changes that are happening right now? How can this region lead? >> Well, certainly collaboration, there's no doubt about that. I mean, we all understand that there's some transmission constraints within our region and it's going to take some serious collaboration. and to be able to address that, get the want to be a national leader, or want to continue to bear the needs of our membership. Certainly the geography lent itself to a lot more solar, lent itself to, I think, some untapped hydro that's still out there, some capacity. I think those are the advantages we have. And I think when you look at the Western slope, this corridor here, between here and grand junction, there's a like-minded, kind of strategic viewpoint. And I think those are going to be our advantages going forward. And that does spill over into the South down to New Mexico, or otherwise, electricity doesn't understand the state boundaries. So, which is tough. Sometimes you write the electrons. That's one thing. Why are those electrons going here and here and what you know, what actually comes here, but it's titled somewhere else in this, and that's, but it's all integrated. And so, I think this region has a lot of potential still, but it's going to take collaboration yet there. What do you think? How can we lead as a region? I think we'll lead with our opportunity, you know? We just mentioned that solar is a great region that we have here. The eastern part of the state is what you see in Mexico for wind. And we also have a large gas supply that can help to balance out as portfolios, so we can weed in all those aspects. And then also what we have for large amounts of transmission that's available, currently, that is not locked up, and how we manage that and how we tie ends of that to balance what I would call the seams. Because we are part of the SPP region organization, which is more the west slope into the east slope into the Midwest. And then we are also on the border of where the California ISO and that operation is or operate the California ISO independent system operator and how we balance between those two seams. That gives us a great opportunity to lead on both sides of the fence. I think Chris, I think technology's good, collaboration is good. Or I think it's a leadership. I think it's really getting back to the members. And how can we lead and show that this model really will work? That as we move forward in the changing energy world where we want more control of our energy, I think we can lead region by being leaders and being innovative and collaborative in that. And then passion instead of just being independent, but looking still like a small utility. But I do think that's where we have free opportunities is kind of getting the members' inputs in their knowledge. I think a lot of times people think that memberships don't know a lot about electricity. And I have found that they know a lot about electricity. They know a lot about what they want from the services we have. And historically, we don't listen to them. Psychic, the key for us in this region, Chris, is really the leadership through our membership and the ideas they have then we can then put it to work. It's kind of changing the whole utility paradigm you vertically integrate into something that is member-driven and has benefits for everybody. All right. A few more questions here that wanted to get panels filed on them. I'm going to have a turn. So that was a kind of regional question. Now let's turn the inward a little bit. What's something in your family's life, your personal life? A decision you've made that maybe has-- you've adjusted based on your knowledge of the energy sector. You should start. I know. I've been carefully not answering any questions, I've heard. This fair, that's fair. What have I changed? You know, the house that we have, or you're living in Denver, we added solar to that as well as move to driving electric vehicles and we were charging them, tried to match it up closely with the solar production that we had. So that was one way that we really changed and moving to heat pumps. That was another key decision that worked out really well. So yeah, those are a couple of examples. And LED light bulbs, great. Oh, there's my wife providing me. Oh yeah, don't forget it. All the light bulbs, maybe everybody changed. But the entire house where you're placed all over, you've got some bifolves and LEDs. Thank you, my dear. I appreciate you at L first. So long we were required, like, poles and lanners of-- yeah, luckily no one got hurt. I've been changing to this light bulb. Let's take it totally different on the electric utility sector. But we have really changed our culture at our electric utility from the safety standpoint to be recognized nationally for our safety culture. And really, how that drives, how you do work. And it's like, is that holding you back? How you're doing tailboards? Is that half-tailed building you back as you're doing this process even? As you work through your safety culture, it makes you more efficient on the rest of your process. The thing you go home and then you get the flip flops on in the shorts and you start readwacking in front of you. Also, it's right. Hold on a minute. What's happening? Well, dad, I seem to do that after I was like, whoa, hold on, you say. It takes a while when you have kids. And now I'm a bringing a grandfather. And I know I'm going to worry so much about him, but how you bring that safety culture home and how you balance it out and run it both sides. We're going to come back and check for steel to our boots at a hex house. Oh, that's the place to shoot open the door a little. Put it in a plug. But I will say, I mean, from a personal perspective, my viewpoint changed. Some years, 2018, I went on an inter-ECA international project and we lit up two villages in Guatemala and in Patuna homes and a couple of schools, a couple of churches. And that was fantastic to see lights come on for the first time and to see that they had not. So I mean, to go back to just the roots of what the United States was like in the late 1930s that your reference. But even Borso has been our decision to participate in light of Navajo. And we have 13,000 more Americans out there. And I will tell you, very close to your eye for Americans, I learned going down to the nation. We've been down this, if you're going down. And I go personally every year and we strip our titles and we all take the title of volunteer. And we go off and we build lines and we light up homes. And I think your perspective towards electricity, any electron changes when you've seen those who don't have it. And then, unlike comes on literally and their whole life changes and for general issues to come. And so I think that's something that's changed personally for me. [APPLAUSE] Jack, you alluded to this earlier. We've got a lot of changes happening in electricity sector. You mentioned data centers. It's got a lot of press. Most of that's happening in places like Virginia, Texas, Arizona, right now, so not a lot in Colorado or in our neighborhood at the moment. And I'm guessing all four of us have heard from somebody, hey, can I come to your neighborhood? So there are inquiries out there, but not aware of any projects in our neighborhood right now. On top of that, things like electrification, population growth, just general increase in demand for all four of our systems, sometimes fast, sometimes slower. But how, I want to hear from each of the panelists, how are you planning for that group? How are you planning for having enough resources for your members or owners in that environment? I guess, Chris, we're planning, I think, when we were with Tri-State, they did all the planning. Basically, we did the power requirement, they did all the planning, we did numbers. Now, we have to do those plan. That plan, we have to deal with all with our counties and cities and our levels to determine how they're going to grow and bad. So there's more interaction with our community and where and how we're going to grow and what asset, both resource to they want. So I think it's more interactive. The other thing we're trying to do is, in some ways, really don't care where the meeters, because I think one of the areas that we're really going to struggle with is people who have medical devices that require electricity all the time. And so our growth rate, we're not really, we're 1.5%. But our population is aging. And just because of rural nature, we have one hospital, one regional hospital. So people are according to the hospital, and then he sent home with a box that is electricity. The dialysis, CPAP, those type of-- so we're looking at how do we address that type of growth, the growth in the quality of life that people lead. And so now we're looking at what can we do behind the meeters that they basically use a battery when they need it. So we always have power there. But then we, when we need it, we use it. So we're looking at those type of strategies versus building a bigger solar array or building a bigger substation. Because really, how do we look at the changing demographics of our community also? We're in a region that is really thoughtful about energy. So a lot of energy efficiency around homes that are self-facing, so there's know, the solar gain you get from that. So ours is really looking at these quality of life type of strategies where people have in medical devices require medication and needs to be refrigerated post-COVID. There's a lot of folks who work from home now and they cannot deal without electricity 'cause now that's their livelihood. So we're looking at strategies of how to address that type of protein. There's just pain, you know, building more poles and wires and those type of resources. - Ben, at least, Jack. - Yeah, absolutely, you know, we're more gauge now than we were, obviously, post-try state with more partners, right? And so before it was just try state could do it for you and they may let you know they get a little income from you and but they have handled it now. We have to manage our strategy and our group of strategy and then translate that with multiple partners and ensure that we're in sync with where they're playing their resources for the future. But it also puts a lot more burden on the individual cooperative to ensure that they have the kind of robust and effective demand sign management programs and the distributed energy resource programs and energy efficiency programs to counter that early demand as well so that you can hedge some of that or shape some of that off and not be as vulnerable at that period that you might otherwise be. - I think our utility is a little different and unique in that mindset. There was a point in time when Farmington was a metropolitan area that was the fastest shrinking of the unit of stance. That was when the oil and gas adjusted in earlier. And so our load has actually dropped 20% in the last 15 years and at a state reasonably flat. Our engineers kind of liked that our transmission engineers, our distribution engineers they wanted to reel on the lines. Let's look for a fugacity there. But over the last four or five years we've seen more people consider it interconnect agreements and our peak load all time ever was 208 megawatts. That's the highest peak we ever had. Today in the summertime it'll hit about 184 where some are peaking and the summer winter peaking and that's where you can out collaboration to kind of flatten those across utilities that people start talking which we do. But really what we've seen as people say, hey I want to add an additional load it used to be hey we had a new tarry became or hey we had a Sam's Club or something like that. Now we have loads that are being considered that could be 50 megawatts or 100 megawatts that's half of our entire peak. The story during all those analysis so how early managed your resource adequacy slowly and carefully because you don't want to over build in your utility and then it doesn't come and then you have a stranded assets and then that's burdened by your customers. So you want to build it and balance that it blare it in those mindsets. And then you get to the wires how you look at those resources 'cause it's not so easy to build a brand new transmission line. You know, Laplata Electric I think there's 200 miles of transmission and we're about to have 270 miles of transmission. It's not so easy to build a new transmission line right now. You know, they did the Zia Project in New Mexico took a few decades, right, to complete. So then you start getting creative and how you engineer things. You look at things like dynamic line ratings. How do you, historically our engineers would say this like it handled this load in the way it turned in the summertime. Now you look at all the variables of when the temperature to adjust it to change the capacity on those lines without building any trance mission. And then you look at new loads of things like that and you take the engineer side of it to balance how those lines are protected. 'Cause guess what? If they were to damage and fail, it would take a long time to put it back up. Even if you're drilling the lines and testing them and changing a few holes here and there, if you had to burn down we'd say close some climb time. So then you look at things called remedial action schemes and things like that that if your contingencies on your transmission happen and the transmission line fails, how do you shut off people for a short term so you can get it back on quickly instead of having to paint a spell for a long term. So how do you manage resources is carefully, slowly, then do it right the first time. I love that and I was gonna pick up on Hank's point. You know, the time to talk about the winter peak versus summer peaks. We have a winter peak. Our highest load in the plant electric is about 160 megawatts so not too far off with Farmington. And that typically happens on a cold day in the winter. And we had a pretty mild winter this year. So we didn't get there compared to the previous years. And in the summer, we'll get to about 110. So that gives you a sense of how our system operates. But Hank's point is such a great one, which is as we learn to collaborate more and this new interconnected grid that we're all part of, fairy lies, a bunch of great opportunity for us all to share and learn from each other, share resources, drag down costs for our members, our owners. And that, that I think is one of the things I hope you walk away tonight with that sense. There is a huge amount of opportunity there across our region. But I was gonna end up on a question and to kind of have each of the panelists think about kind of one big investment decision that we made the last couple of years. Something that really sticks out that was a major decision, something maybe lost a little stone over that we see real big difference for your members. Something that sticks out in the last couple of years. - I'll take that first. Just by coincidence, this last week, all of our reclosers are now electronic in honor of fiber system, fire optic system. That's been a multi-year project and that's gonna help in terms of grid liability. So grid modernization in general, and there's gonna be much more of it as alluded to earlier because we're behind. But I would say that the area that we're emerging proudly is in vegetation management. We have a systematic approach to bring a vegetation management in-house over the next few years. It's been already a few years in progress. And that's something that we take seriously, especially in the kind of terrain that we serve. That, I think is, and we've already seen a significant improvement in our SADI results, which is the index of your system interruption outages in a fancy acronym. But I think those two things have been two most important investments. That free modernization is reflected by the recloser, like John Quirk-Closer is an in-vegetation aspect. - Thanks, Jack. Luis. You know, I think it's the micro-meds that we're building in the hydrogen facility that we're building for long duration storage. And it's really to address the issues I've brought up and that Jack is just brought up. We think our biggest, we know at biggest risk, the co-occur is well-fired. And that the co-op causing it, while lying or going down or tripping on the line, is one of the, it could bankrupt any utility in the country. And so we believe by putting a lot of money into storage, where we could basically disconnect the power lines going through the forest, you still have areas with power, at least so that the leaders of the community, the first responders, can make some decisions of what to do, is probably the biggest investment we're gonna make in a whole change in mindset. We don't think that power-seeking power shut-offs are the way they build, 'cause all we do is transfer the risk from a co-op to the member. And I don't think that's bad. And so I think this whole idea, we're putting storage, where the battery is hydrogen, whatever we can do to make sure that we have some hard through these extreme weather pens and potential fire risks. And it's costly, and it's new to the full membership, to be able to shut out the power. No one knows that it's gonna come back on. And so I think that's probably the biggest investment, but we're gonna make into the future. - Yes, please. You know, as I thought about that, as I let's know, there's, I thought, oh, let's talk about new generation we built over the last year. Oh, let's talk about that. One substation at a school on the one side and the river on the other. And we had to build a she-fly and move the mobile sub and then tear it apart and build it back together one of the most complex substation outings I've seen. And then I thought of something that I'm pretty proud of, that's pretty born. Which is, we installed, which were a little behind others, I think Laplata installed earlier, but we installed a advanced meter. And so advanced metering quickly increased efficiency of our utility. But one of my paper mantras is, as we look at anything that's complex and how it challenges us, we get the data, we make it be information and then we take action on it. So what AMI also provides us is, how is our distribution system working? How are our loads on it? We can put that into our distribution models and our distribution engineers to manage our circuits to make them reliable. Also that our advanced metering is said to somebody calling you on a phone and say, hey, there's a transformer I heard popper, there's an outage, it's tied to our outage management system. And it immediately projects, we're a failure, maybe it occurred, so our line making get there quicker and respond quicker to get the lights back on. It also gives us those low calculations to say, hey, do we have a little distributive energy getting a little strong over here or is there things like this? Or do we have voltage issues? we can get all of that, so data to information action. A little boring when you're put a 45,000 on there, but it's it really has a lot of value What that word boring we will often say at the office. Let's make electricity boring again As boring as possible You want to make coffee in the morning. Don't even think about it. Just make your coffee That's our job. It's a great night. We have to celebrate the men and women who make that happen Chance to hear from industry leaders in our and our own neighborhood if you're here You know different approaches to some of the similar problems that we're all facing I was going to pick up quickly on Jack's comment about some some big new investments in mitigation of vegetation and hardening our system Creating some micro grids and battery storage technology that we're evaluating right now to do some very similar things to At least is is describing so we've got power in certain parts of our system even if a line were to go down or we have a problem with a line And we're all dealing with some some tough territory Topography and wildfire danger that is is as high as I think anybody in the room has ever seen it That's the summer that we've got coming up. That's the moment that we're in right now And so just want to celebrate that work So lucky to get to do this work these these gentlemen and and some incredible colleagues across Colorado in Mexico that I've had a chance to work with and I will now ask you to join me and thanking them for making the trip to Gran Looking back that day in Durango really did mark a turning point for your co-op Energy independence is why we can now make that connection between place and power that Nicole talked about It's why Chris could stand up and lay out a vision statement built for the next chapter not just the next year So this is our our vision statement the board just updated this in October or worked long and hard I'm really trying to distill down. What is the vision for your co-op and the board settled on these three phrases We want to be member powered every single day We want to be focusing on the future and ready for the future and we strive to be a national leader in every part of our operations That's our vision statement for your co-op If April taught us anything, it's that our mission and vision mean more when we celebrate them together as a community So mark your calendars. We're doing it again this October for national co-op month Join us on October 13th as we bring that same energy back to Durango Registration details are up on lpea.coop. We'd love to see you there Thanks for listening the southwest power stories. I'm Monica Vic. See you next time