Keeping the lights on in Falcon, Colo., and the eastern plains is not easy. Mountain View Electric Association serves Falcon, Black Forest, Monument and other communities north and east of Colorado Springs. MVEA has a long history of bringing electricity to the rural and formerly rural communities, despite snow, wind, floods and fire.Before the 1936 Rural Electrification Act, the rural areas outside Colorado Springs were told it was not profitable for the electric companies to provide electricity to them, according to a history piece published by MVEA.In December 1940, about 150 people met in Black Forest to establish an energy cooperative. The new co-op purchased Commonwealth Electric Co. in Limon and the power lines along U.S. Highway 24.MVEA now serves portions of eight counties covering 5,000 square miles. There are two main offices. The Limon headquarters houses the top leadership and billing. The Falcon Operation Center is home to most of the member services, line crews and other support staff. Of the 135 MVEA employees, 100 of them are based in Falcon, said Darryl Edwards, member services manager.ìThe majority of our membership is on the western side of the territory: Falcon, Black Forest and Monument,î Edwards said. ìThe Limon headquarters takes care of the eastern part of the system, from Simla and to the east.îThe co-op is designed to distribute power, rather than generate it. Some renewable generation on private land happens within the MVEA territory through the net metering system, Edwards said. Individual customers with solar or wind generation can feed electricity back into the system when they are generating more than the customer uses at the time. However, almost all the energy on the MVEA grid comes from Tri-State Generation and Transmission, a co-operative power producer based in Westminster, Colo.ìTri-State is a co-op just like us; they provide power generation for the 44 other electrical co-ops in the region,î Edwards said. Tri-State’s 5,306 miles of high voltage transmission lines bring energy from the company’s coal, oil, natural gas and wind generation facilities. The most recent data available from the producer shows the electricity on its grid is 70 percent from coal, compared to a national average of 49 percent. Tri-State owns several coal mines in Wyoming that supply its power plants.ìThey handle generation and transmission to our substations,î Edwards said. From there, MVEA’s network of 6,012 miles of line distribute electricity to its 48,901 members. Keeping all those miles of line powered up is the job of the operations center staff in Falcon.Weather and accidents are the primary reasons some of those miles of lines lose their juice. A combination of old-fashioned phone call work and high-tech computer software help the MVEA staff determine the location of power outages and how to quickly repair them. ìPeople do still need to call outages in to us,î Edwards said. ìNow people can also text outage information in.îOnce the initial calls come in, the co-op’s computers take over to determine the likely extent and cause. ìThe software package is able to tell how many customers are probably out,î Edwards said. ìIt gives the line crews instructions on where the outage probably began. It also automatically populates the outage information map on our website, which people can check out to see when we expect them to be back on.îWeather is the primary factor for outages on the eastern side of the territory. ìIt takes the right kind of weather conditions to give us problems,î Edwards said. ìWe can go years before we have major outages out east. If we get a lot of ice buildup and then heavy winds, we may lose poles.îEach time unusual weather conditions take down service, the staff learns more about protecting the system in the future. ìEvery time it has happened, we rebuild the structures a bit more robustly and do other things we can to make sure the next similar weather conditions don’t cause problems,î Edwards said.One of the ways the line crews are able to combat the characteristic winds of Falcon and the eastern plains is the air foil spoilers on the lines. These mass dampers help prevent line galloping, which happens when wind and ice create wing-like structures of ice on the lines. In wind, the lines can oscillate until they snap from stress or touch a grounded object.Trees weighed down by heavy snow can break branches and bend trees into lines, which will cause outages, Edwards said. Proactive tree trimming in co-op easements have helped avoid this, but a little help from Mother Nature doesn’t hurt. ìWe’ve been doing very well lately with weather, which is more luck than anything,î Edwards said.Accidents happen and equipment can fail. The best defense against power outages is a strong response program. ìWe have two crews on the eastern side and one on the western who are on standby 24/7 to cover outages, even throughout the night,î Edwards said. ìIf there’s a major outage, then everyone gets called in. In that case, we have 20 two-person crews available to take care of a widespread problem.îAn example of the all-hands response was the Black Forest Fire. ìWe have about 80 percent of all the lines in Black Forest back in service within the burned area,î Edwards said. ìThe other 20 percent is waiting on building permits, not delayed because of us. We pride ourselves in being there when people need us.îThe co-op needs its member customers’ help to keep energy reliable for everyone in the territory. Outage calls and text information can be found at the http://outage.mvea.org website. Hazard trees near power lines should be trimmed, especially in the burn areas where damaged trees may look alive but were fatally harmed by the fire. Residents and businesses adding significant electrical loads should contact the staff to make sure the demand won’t overload the area.ìOur policy is that if you build on or do something different to need more power, that upgrade is on us,î Edwards said. ìIt’s unique, but that’s been our policy for decades and is a benefit of us always being a rural co-op looking to increase services for our members.î
