Archive for category: Energy Innovations Newsletter

Meeker-based electric cooperative White River Electric Association joins other Colorado electric cooperatives as a recipient of a Charge Ahead Colorado grant from the Colorado Energy Office. The grant awarded to WREA will help fund two electric vehicle charging stations.

Both a level II and level III charger will be installed in the town of Meeker and will be the first electric car charging units in the county. The EV market is growing in the northwestern part of the state, and WREA wants to be prepared to support its local community, consumer-members and area travelers.

WREA has not decided the charging station fee schedule yet, but the two units will be have a base fee plus a per-kilowatt-hour fee. The units will be installed and operational by mid-summer 2019.

 

 

The Environmental Science Class from Resurrection Christian School spent an afternoon with Fort Collins-based Poudre Valley REA and CSU Extension to plant pollinator-friendly seeds at the Coyote Ridge Community Solar Farm. Through this innovative use of solar farm land, the project will benefit nearby agriculture, contribute to the preservation efforts of pollinating species (birds, bees, etc.) and improve the beauty of the site.

The Colorado Energy Office recently awarded Yampa Valley Electric Association a Charge Ahead Colorado grant to fund two electric vehicle charging stations. The charging stations will be installed at YVEA’s offices in Craig and Steamboat Springs and will be for employee and public use.

The Steamboat Springs-based electric cooperative received a total of $18,000 for the charging stations. The chargers are expected to be installed and ready for use by July. Though not the first Colorado electric cooperative to receive a Charge Ahead Colorado grant, this innovative program will bring the first publicly accessible charging station to Moffat County.

Charge Ahead Colorado’s program aims to promote EV charger installations across the state with the hopes to accelerate the more widespread adoption of EVs.

Three proposed wind farms are being developed in K.C. Electric’s service territory on Colorado’s eastern plains. The Cheyenne Ridge wind farm is a 500-megawatt wind farm developed by TradeWind Energy. NextEra Energy will develop a 300-megawatt wind farm south of Flagler called Bronco Plains. And EDP Renewables is developing a 104-megawatt wind farm south of Seibert called Crossing Trails.

The Crossing Trails project is located in both Kit Carson and Cheyenne counties and will require a new 230,000-volt transmission line to be built from the wind farm to an existing transmission line. K.C. Electric’s power provider, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, has signed a power purchase agreement with EDP to purchase the output of the Crossing Trails wind farm, some of which will be distributed into K.C.’s system. It is expected that these three wind farms will be in service by the end of 2020.

The Trout Creek Solar array went online January 31 and is fully operational. As reported in a late-2018 edition of the Energy Innovations newsletter, the project was approved for construction at the end of August 2018 when Sangre de Cristo Electric Association signed a 36-year site license agreement.

In an innovative partnership with the Colorado Department of Corrections, the site sits on the Buena Vista Correctional Complex property south of Buena Vista.

Trout Creek Solar has 7,952 panels on a sun-tracking system which maximizes production. The array will generate about 5,752 megawatt hours of energy and will generate approximately 4.7 percent of the co-op’s annual energy usage. SDCEA will celebrate the opening of the facility when the weather warms up.

https://crea.coop/2018/10/25/buena-vista-co-op-moves-forward-with-solar-project/