CREA executive director’s monthly column published in Colorado Country Life magazine.

Advocating in D.C. for Colorado Co-ops

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The Colorado Rural Electric Association spends many hours and resources representing the interests of its member co-ops before the Colorado General Assembly. Each year from January through May, CREA staff and contract lobbyists carefully follow all the legislative proposals considered by our state legislature to determine if they will have any impact on electric co-ops. This is a job that requires our attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week to make sure proposed new laws won’t have any negative impacts on electric co-op members.

In addition to our work at the state level, CREA also works with the national trade association — the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association — to promote and protect the interests of Colorado co-ops in Washington, D.C. While most of the policy action takes place in Colorado, there are many federal initiatives that are relevant to Colorado’s electric co-ops.

In 2021, the United States Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. One of the provisions of that law authorized electric co-ops to apply for grants and loans to help pay for distribution grid projects that will reduce the risk of wildfires and improve the resilience of electric co-op systems. In 2022, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included a loan and grant program specifically for electric co-ops. The funds authorized by this law were made available to electric co-ops to help them acquire new generating resources and improve the reliability of their systems.

Colorado’s electric co-ops collectively spent thousands of hours working with the appropriate government agencies and filing applications for these grants and loans. Over the last year or so, CREA’s member co-ops have been extremely successful in being awarded grants and loans that will be administered by the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Homeland Security. These grants and loans provide a historic opportunity for Colorado’s electric co-ops to invest in infrastructure that will serve their members at the end of the line with affordable, reliable electricity for many years into the future.

I recently traveled to Washington, D.C., with a group of Colorado co-op CEOs to meet with our members of Congress to emphasize the critical importance of these loans and grants to Colorado’s electric co-op members. Co-ops serve about 70% of Colorado’s land mass, and any help we can get to keep rates affordable and service reliable is much appreciated.

The grants and loans that have been committed to Colorado’s electric co-ops will benefit thousands of Coloradans, and we urge all officials of the federal government to honor these commitments.

Kent Singer is the executive director of CREA and offers a statewide perspective on issues affecting electric cooperatives. CREA is the trade association for 21 Colorado electric distribution co-ops and one power supply co-op.

Colorado co-op members gather at CREA 80th Annual Meeting.2025

Celebrating 80 Years

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Eighty years! That’s how long the Colorado Rural Electric Association has been advocating for and providing services to Colorado’s electric cooperatives. Founded in 1945, our trade association has partnered with our member co-ops for decades to support their mission of providing reliable and affordable electricity to all corners of Colorado. We celebrated our 80th anniversary during the recent annual meeting of our members in Denver; here are some highlights.

Industry Updates

In addition to full-day education sessions focused on cooperative governance and power supply issues, we hosted an amazing group of speakers on a wide variety of topics: an economic update from CFC; an update on activities in the U.S. Congress from CoBank; a state political update from our CREA government relations team; a panel discussing data centers and their potential impacts on co-ops, and a co-op power supplier conversation.

The meeting was an opportunity for co-op directors and CEOs to hear the latest on what’s happening in the fast-moving electric industry.

Light Up Navajo

Attendees also heard from Walter Haas, the head of the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority. We have worked with NTUA for the last couple of years to send co-op lineworkers to the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona to help build electric lines to homes without access to power. Last year, line crews from seven Colorado electric co-ops worked with employees of NTUA to construct distribution lines to serve dozens of families. Haas made a special trip to Denver to thank our co-ops and CREA for their contribution to this work. We look forward to continuing our support of NTUA to help power the lives of the many Navajo citizens who are still living without electricity.

Legislative Reception and Breakfast

Our annual meeting is always scheduled when the Colorado General Assembly is in session so that we can meet with legislators and talk about issues that concern electric co-ops. We had great participation by the members of our legislature again this year and we had a chance to talk about the many issues facing our members, including the risks posed by wildfires on rural communities.

Our 80th annual meeting was a huge success due to the engagement of our members and the excellent work of the entire CREA team. We look  forward to another 80 years protecting the interests of Colorado’s electric cooperatives!

Kent Singer is the executive director of CREA and offers a statewide perspective on issues affecting electric cooperatives. CREA is the trade association for 21 Colorado electric distribution co-ops and one power supply co-op.

Wildfire Mitigation – A statewide viewpoint

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The recent wildfires in California are a heartbreaking reminder of the risks that face many communities in the arid western United States. While a combination of drought, high winds, and low humidity all conspired to create the conditions for this tragic event, it’s not clear yet who or what was responsible for igniting the fires. It has been suggested that electric utility facilities may have been the cause of at least one of the wildfires, although that has not been proven.

Whether or not the Southern California wildfires were caused by electric power lines, there is no doubt that utility facilities have previously been the cause of wildfires in California. Colorado’s electric co-ops are very much aware of these risks, and they do everything in their power to reduce the possibility that their facilities will cause a wildfire. Electric co-ops go to great lengths to clear vegetation from around their power lines and other facilities, and they are leaders in deploying new technology to anticipate and detect conditions where wildfires may be more likely.

Colorado’s electric co-ops also prepare wildfire mitigation plans that spell out in detail all the steps they take to lower the risks of wildfires. But even the most comprehensive wildfire mitigation plan does not guarantee safety. With thousands of miles of power lines across the state, many of which traverse remote forests and public lands, it is impossible to mitigate all the risks.

For that reason, CREA has been working on a legislative proposal that would recognize the work being done by Colorado’s electric co-ops around wildfire mitigation. The bill would provide some measure of liability protection for those co-ops that have implemented a state-approved wildfire mitigation plan. Without a bill like this, it may become impossible for Colorado co-ops to obtain adequate liability insurance to protect their consumer-members. Other states have passed similar legislation, and we’re hopeful that the Colorado legislature will consider this bill — if not this year, then in the 2026 session of the legislature.

Colorado’s electric co-ops need reassurance that if they do everything that is reasonably possible to mitigate the risk that their facilities will cause a wildfire, they will not be subject to lawsuits that could literally bankrupt them. Co-ops will always do everything in their power to protect the communities they serve, including investing time and money in measures to reduce the risk of wildfires.

Kent Singer is the executive director of CREA and offers a statewide perspective on issues affecting electric cooperatives. CREA is the trade association for 21 Colorado electric distribution co-ops and one power supply co-op.

Solar panels on roof

Behind The Meter: How Does At-Home Energy Generation Impact the Grid?

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By Kent Singer, CREA Executive Director

Since the inception of the Colorado electric co-op program in the 1930s, the traditional path for delivering electricity to co-op members has largely remained the same: Power is generated at a central station power plant, transmitted across high voltage transmission lines, and finally distributed over a local system to end-use customers at their homes and businesses. While the source of the “central station” power varies from state to state, the basic system of generation, transmission and distribution (G,T&D) of electricity has looked the same for decades.

This “G,T&D” model will remain the path for most of the electricity consumed by Colorado’s electric co-op members for years to come; however, more and more co-op members are opting to generate electricity at their premises. They do this by using solar panels on their rooftops or other sources of power that are “behind the meter.” And, as is the case for most renewable energy generation, it’s not always available and fluctuates depending on weather conditions. With that in mind, there are two scenarios at play for a co-op member’s on-premise system: Excess generation and inadequate generation.

If a co-op member’s residential rooftop solar system produces more electricity than they consume, Colorado’s electric co-ops have agreed to — and state law requires them to — “net meter” the energy the co-op receives from member-owned solar arrays. Net metering simply means that when excess electricity is exported to the grid, the co-op member receives kilowatt-hour credits valued at the retail rate. A member of a Colorado electric co-op can reduce the amount of electricity they purchase from the co-op since the solar panels on their rooftops are producing at least some, if not all, of the power they require for their home or business. In this scenario, the co-op member who is generating excess electricity benefits from their use of the co-op distribution system to manage and credit their excess solar energy production.

Unless they are completely off the grid and are generating all the electricity they need, co-op members with rooftop solar systems must still be connected to the co-op’s distribution infrastructure. This ensures the delivery of electricity to their home or business whenever it is required — for example, during a string of cloudy days when their solar panels don’t generate adequate electricity. Electric co-ops have a legal obligation to maintain adequate facilities in order to provide reliable electric service to their members.

It’s true that the need for a co-op to purchase power from a wholesale supplier is decreased when its members generate their own electricity. However, the co-op is still responsible for maintaining a robust distribution system that will serve all the co-op’s members.

This raises an important question for Colorado’s electric co-ops (and other electric utilities): If an electric co-op member benefits from the poles and wires to provide electricity when the rooftop solar panels aren’t sufficient, but that member no longer buys any or as much power from the co-op, should that member be required to pay for the continuing maintenance and replacement costs of those facilities?

As more and more co-op members install solar arrays, the way that co-ops compensate their members for consumer-sited generation may need to be reexamined. With the increase in residential solar systems, co-ops receive less revenue from energy sales, but they continue to have expenses related to maintaining the distribution grid. Co-ops may also need to make new infrastructure investments to enable the storage of excess solar production to help meet peak demands for electricity in the afternoon.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about whether any changes need to be made to the existing net metering rules from both the perspective of solar installers and electric utilities. As not-for-profit utilities, co-ops aren’t incentivized to make a profit, but they still must meet their payrolls, run their trucks, and invest in system maintenance and improvements. These costs are shared among all co-op members.

Colorado’s electric co-ops go to great lengths to treat all of their members fairly and equitably, and they will continue to do so as they integrate more behind-the-meter, customer-sited renewable energy resources.

 

Kent Singer is the executive director of CREA and offers a statewide perspective on issues affecting electric cooperatives. CREA is the trade association for 21 Colorado electric distribution co-ops and one power supply co-op