201A Cruz Alta Rd • Taos, NM 87571, Copyright 2018, Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, KCEC Planned Substation Maintenance- SEPTEMBER 2020. “Further as one of the largest solar projects in the Kit Carson service territory, it is an important step for KCEC as we continue to integrate solar electricity into our local distribution grid.”. While it has invested some in renewables, it still gets most of its power from coal-fired generation, is heavily invested in coal plants and coal mines—with significant ownership stakes at plants and mines in Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming—and has been dubbed by KCEC “the most carbon-intensive generation and transmission cooperative in the entire country, with an aging fleet that is also significantly more expensive than market prices.”. }); Tri-State, after KCEC’s departure in 2016, has 43 member co-ops in four states (it is named for its original presence in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska—its expansion into New Mexico came later). Local economic benefits tied to lower long-term electric rates and to job creation associated with KCEC’s solar buildout. Providing permanent, skilled jobs for local residents was important to the cooperative, so Fujitsu, as integrator, trained KCEC staff to take over the maintenance and operation jobs. Kit Carson Electric. That is huge. KCEC combined efforts with the Rio Costilla Cooperative Livestock Association (RCCLA) to develop a 14 acre photovoltaic solar system to provide power to businesses and residences in northern Taos County. Masha Zager is the editor of Broadband Communities. It submitted the proposal in the second round of the stimulus project and this time was awarded $64 million in Rural Utilities Service grants and loans. Using the model, the team is writing an operational plan for solar build-out on their system. It is through working together that we can make a difference!”, Phone: (575) 758-2258 Kit Carson Electric Cooperative will conduct a series of  PLANNED POWER OUTAGES during the month of September and October, to allow crews to perform Preventive Maintenance on ALL substations within the service territory; in preparation for the winter months. Kit Carson Internet. They estimate further that the deal with Guzman will save the co-op $50-$70 million over the full 10-year life of the agreement. Tri-State’s membership approved KCEC’s exit by a vote of 44-0. var _rsCL=1; Kit Carson Electric Cooperative Deploys FTTH for Economic Development. timeout: 6000 // milliseconds between slide transitions (0 to disable auto advance) Kit Carson Internet. KCEC’s new power purchase agreement also sets the price bar markedly lower than Tri-State’s, which in its most recent annual report put its average 2017 wholesale rate to members at $75/MWh. The co-op’s solar program is anchored to a federal initiative that promotes KCEC’s potential for replication through a “Resilient Renewable Energy Roadmap for Rural Electric Cooperatives”10 that KCEC is developing jointly with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. While the collaborative effort signified a considerable milestone for the town of Amalia, the team’s plans were challenged when financing could not be secured. Other states have also shown rapid growth in solar activity, including Colorado (3% of the state’s total generation), New Mexico (4.8%), North Carolina (5.4%), Arizona (6.7%), and Massachusetts (11.4%). random: 1, Kit Carson Electric Cooperative (KCEC), founded in 1944 under the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, is a non-profit, member-owned utility company that serves an area of north-central New Mexico encompassing high-desert, mountainous, and canyonland terrain in Rio Arriba, Taos and Colfax counties. Kit Carson Electric serves 22,887 consumers living in Colfax, Río Arriba, and Taos counties. KCEC over the past three years has moved fundamentally to reinvent its business model by exiting a long-term contract with Tri-State Generation Transmission Association (Tri-State), a largely fossil-fueled power provider based in suburban Denver. After that, it plummets for the final four years to an average of about $47/MWh through 2026. KCEC was particularly concerned about serving the two tribal communities in its territory. Kit Carson Internet. We also spent two years negotiating a reasonable exit charge from Tri-State, also without success.”. “It is an exciting project for both the customers who (now) reap the benefits of renewable energy and for Standard Solar as we (have) extended our business into the Southwest.”. The initiative is part of a broader program that includes similar partnerships between NREL and the City of Orlando; the City of San Diego; the Montana Renewable Energy Association; PJM Interconnection and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners; the Clean Energy States Alliance; and the Great Plains Institute.11 NREL’s description of the KCEC initiative and its potential for replication [emphasis added]: “KCEC is currently partnering with multiple stakeholders to plan the deployment of an additional 35 megawatts of solar photovoltaics by strategically deploying smaller one-megawatt solar arrays across their service area. KCEC had endured 12 rate increases from 2000-2016 under Tri-State, increases that doubled the price KCEC was paying for power from Tri-State over the full 16-year period, from $39.06/MWh to $79.17/MWh.7 These increases were predictable in only one sense—that they could be expected year after year. For Kit Carson Electric Cooperative (KCEC), building an FTTH network was just one more step along a nearly 80-year path of serving its members. As KCEC’s chief executive wrote in a March 2019 letter to a member of the New Mexico Legislature, “Guzman Energy enabled us to take a huge step toward that goal, financing our exit from Tri-State and developing a partnership that provides flexibility and support that will cost significantly less than we would have paid had we stayed with Tri-State.”. THE LEAP TO FTTH Its roughly 30,000-square-mile footprint covers a region that is also demographically and ethnically diverse. Could they succeed without stimulus grants? 116 Cruz Alta Rd • Taos, NM 87571, Phone: (575) 758-7757 It also began using fiber to build a smart grid. … Competition will make us all better; the monopoly model isn’t working.” Third-party providers that want to offer services over the network will be able to purchase dedicated wholesale capacity or pay an access fee to use pooled bandwidth. The project not only provides clean energy to numerous consumers in the Amalia area but also helped to boost the local economy with employment through quality clean energy jobs. The Taos array will deliver 3MW of solar energy – enough to power approximately 1,500 to 1,600 families in Kit Carson $(document).ready(function() { Hometown freedom to become a largely solar-driven electricity co-op within a few years’ time (the Guzman deal has no self-generation cap).

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