Canary Media: “This coal-heavy rural coop utility is buying its first solar plants.” Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, one of the largest rural cooperative utilities in the U.S., really should change its name to Quad-State. The reason is that Tri-State generates and transmits power to 41 member cooperatives, which retail to 1 million customers in rural Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Nebraska. “The customer base spans 200,000 square miles, more land than the entirety of California, with an average density of just five customers per mile of power line.” [American cooperative utilites deliver some 12% of our electricity but serve 56 percent of its landscape]. Co-op ‘announced last week it will buy the forthcoming Axial Basin Solar, a 145-megawatt project in Moffat County, Colorado, and Dolores Canyon Solar, a 110-megawatt project in Dolores County, Colorado.’ The co-op also signed 3 new power purchase agreements from solar plants that will come on line by end of 2024. “Within days of that announcement, Tri-State also reported that electricity was flowing from the largest third-party solar project it has contracted for thus far, a 200-megawatt site developed by Origis Solar at the former Escalante Station coal-fired power plant in New Mexico.” US ‘incubated its renewables industry with tax credits, which don’t do much good for the many federal, municipal, or cooperative utilities that generate power as not-for-profit corporations, and thus owe little to the IRS.’ This status changed under the 2022 IRA, which creates a “direct pay” option that lets nonprofits access the same generous clean energy tax credits as their for-profit peers — even with little to no tax burden. IRA also ‘created a program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture called Empowering Rural America, which offered up $9.7 B to help rural utilities finance the transition from coal and support coal communities in the process. Tri-State ‘recently hit a new record for instantaneous renewable production on May 24, when wind + solar delivered 87% of its generation for half an hr.’
Coal to Solar Conversion
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