The La Plata Electric Association (LPEA) — the membership cooperative that provides grid-delivered electricity to Archuleta County — held their required annual members meeting on Tuesday, October 6, via Zoom.
As promised, door prizes were given away at the end of the meeting, also announced via Zoom. (Winners had to be present at the conclusion of the meeting in order to be eligible for the prizes.)
The meeting began with everyone (including, presumably, all the of the 125 or so members watching the meeting on their home computers) standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to an on-screen photograph of an American flag.
Members were invited, at the end of the meeting, to pose questions, and the staff did their best to answer them.
Most of the questions concerned the ongoing negotiations with LPEA’s main electric supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, a much larger co-operative based in Westminster, Colorado. The negotiations have focused on two issues: an expanded allowance for LPEA to purchase electricity from suppliers other than Tri-State, and secondly, the possibility of LPEA getting completely out of its contract with Tri-State. Other questions concerned home-based solar power, LPEA’s efforts to serve electric vehicles, and the rate increase that took place in 2020.
Several staff members provided fresh information about the co-op’s successes during 2020, mentioning such achievements as:
The “strongest financial year in ten years”:
Establishment of a collaborative employee ‘code of excellence”;
Creation of a five-year operational plan;
High employee morale and accountability;
The lowest ‘outage’ times in the past 10 years;
Collaboration with Durango 9-R School District to finance an EV bus…
… and a few other notable achievements.
You can view the entire 1-hour, 16-minute annual meeting on YouTube, here.
You can also view a 6-minute summary video of the co-op’s 2020 achievements below.
The co-op leadership promised to “give the latest updates on our power supply options” during two upcoming “Town Hall” meetings, on October 25 and 27, at 6pm either day.
According to Board president John Witchel, the Town Hall meetings “are going to be great, if you’re really into energy, or you’re really into finance. Those forums will be a deep dive into some of the tougher questions…”
The same information will be shared at both meetings — October 25 and 27 — so interested members need not attend both sessions. You can register for those virtual meetings here. “Fun door prizes” are promised.