About 200 Mountain View Electric Association customers attended the Lamplighter dinner meeting Oct. 25 in Black Forest. The dinner was the largest of three regional dinners the electric co-operative holds each fall to thank the utility’s supporters and update members on legislative issues.The presentation began with an electronic poll on several political issues and customer satisfaction metrics. Sixty-two percent of the attendees said they didn’t believe human caused global warming exists. Seventy-five percent recommended that the utility lobby to oppose carbon-limiting legislation based on cost, and 95 percent said they would not be willing to allow their bill to go up more than $25 per month to meet federal mandates on carbon emissions.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan has been a recurring topic of the Lamplighter dinners and the summer annual membership meetings for the last two years. Jim Herron, chief executive officer, said the CPP is on hold as states and power companies challenge it in federal courts. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is considering a similar plan at the state level, Heron said. ìHe is planning on doing this by executive order ñ- I don’t know where he got the idea,î Herron said. ìHe had a meeting with leaders of the utility industry in the state to rally them to this and didn’t get a very warm reaction.îDespite the negative membership attitude toward reducing electric generation carbon output, many of the questions during the open discussion focused on net metering, community solar gardens and replacing coal generation with natural gas, wind and solar.ìThe government mandates that a certain percentage of your electricity is produced by renewable resources,î Herron said. ì’Cost-effective’ isn’t a factor as much as they’re required by law. However, they are getting cheaper and cheaper. Solar is getting very close to being cost effective.îMVEA is considering offering a community solar garden in which co-op members could purchase a solar panel that would be installed along with other members’ panels at a central location. ìThe rule of thumb is one megawatt per 10 acres, so we’d hope to have two megawatts or 20 acres of solar panels near one of our substations,î Herron said. Each panel would cost about $800. ìTypically, when you do a community solar garden you want to put it where people can see it, drive by and I guess say hi to their panels,î Herron said.Mountain View does not generate any of its own electricity. The co-op purchases all its power from Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. Tri-State has agreed to close some of its coal-fired generation units around Colorado under an agreement with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in response to complaints about regional air quality. The generation company is not concerned about immediately building new infrastructure to replace the units. ìTri-State is in a pretty good position capacity-wise,î said Rick Gordon, Tri-State president and chairman. ìWe have purchased quite a bit of wind energy in the past five or six years, and have two 30-megawatt solar projects in Southern Colorado and New Mexico. We also have been fortunate to buy a natural gas plant, which is very good for working with renewables.îInformation about the possible community solar garden and federal or state mandates on electricity generation will be in the monthly MVEA magazine ìColorado Country Life.î
