Mountain View Electric Association is growing on a daily basis ó and there’s no end in sight.A presentation by Mountain View Chief Executive Officer Jim Herron focused on growth at the October Lamplighter dinner meeting at the Wedgewood Wedding & Banquet Center in Black Forest, Colorado. The annual dinner, drawing co-op members from Falcon, Black Forest and Monument, was the first of three regional dinners hosted by MVEA.”We’ve grown a lot over the last few years,” Herron said. Among roughly 800 such co-ops in the United States, Mountain View is generally among the top 50 in terms of growth, he said.Mountain View has about 50,000 members, with most of them – 42,000 or so – in El Paso County, Herron said. Twenty years ago, there were about 17,000 members in the county.And Herron doesn’t see that growth stopping. “I think Mountain View does have the potential to double in the next 20 years again, if not before,” he said.Herron said people typically are surprised by the scope of Mountain View’s territory, which is roughly 5,000 square miles. “The people in Limon know we serve a lot around Limon, and the people in Falcon know we serve a long ways around the Falcon area, but very seldom do they know we serve in both areas,” he said.Herron also addressed the announcement made a day before the dinner by Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, regarding the agency’s intent to repeal the Clean Power Plan.”I was ecstatic when I heard that,” Herron said. The regulation, enacted by the EPA under the Obama administration, is aimed at reducing carbon emissions, “which sounds real good, until you start looking at the impact that it’s going to have on you, the people,” Herron said. Namely “a huge impact on the price of electricity going forward.”However, his excitement dimmed when he learned the process to repeal will be ìlong (and) drawn out,î he said. îIt doesn’t mean that it’s dead, it just means they’re starting the process.î Herron equated the process with trying to get toothpaste back into the tube.An audience member asked about the merits of solar power. “I think it’s getting more and more cost effective,” he said. However, he cautioned that for people buying solar panels for themselves, ìIt’s about a 20-or-25-year payback on your investment.”Mountain View is looking at utilizing a commercial solar power operation,î Herron said. The co-op does not generate its own electricity, but purchases its power from Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. Mountain View has issued a request for proposals “to see what the vendors have to say, what they could build it for and how much they could sell the electricity back to us for,” Herron said, but nothing has been signed, and the idea remains under study.
