Remaining Reliable

Spring is right around the corner!

It is my hope that everyone is healthy and safe as we begin to emerge from what I hope is our final months of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the United States, and more specifically Wyoming, begins to come out of this pandemic, High Plains Power is still here working hard to uphold our mission statement and provide safe, reliable, and affordable power while following the cooperative principles. 

As many of you may have seen on national news outlets or social media, much of the Midwest experienced record cold temperatures this past month. This created an unprecedented strain on the electrical grid causing rolling brownouts across many states. While much of this has been attributed to a 100-year event, it brings me to question, are we relinquishing safety and reliability to accomplish our nationally legislated carbon reduction goals? As a local distribution cooperative, we have an obligation to maintain our system so that it can withstand extreme conditions so we can provide the electric service that our member-owners deserve and expect. With the local and national political pressures mounting for our G&T cooperative, Tri-State, High Plains Power could face future reliability issues with our power supply. As we continue to retire thermal base generation (coal plants) and replace that production with less-reliable, carbon friendly power options (solar and wind) we begin to lose control of the ability to ramp up and throttle back supply to meet the ever-changing needs of our members. Diversification is an important characteristic to remember; we must remain diversified in our power supply as to avoid situations like the ones experienced by much of the Midwest and Texas during the polar vortex. While we work to do all that we can to keep your power cooperative reliable, please consider reaching out to your local and national legislature representatives to let them know that their environmental decisions have cascading impacts here at home.  

At High Plains Power we will continue to have the hard conversations with our power supplier and local and national representatives as to ensure that we are able to continue to meet our member’s expectations and fulfill our mission of delivering safe, reliable, and affordable electricity while following the cooperative principles.

Darick Eisenbraun, CEO