EEA Supports Valley Range Energy Park!

Empire Electric Association in partnership with Gunnison County Electric Association, San Luis Valley Rural Electric Cooperative and San Miguel Power Association, was successful in bidding for third-party power supply in Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association’s Bring Your Own Resource program. The BYOR program allows Tri-State member cooperatives to purchase up to 40% of their power supply from a third party power supplier. The partnership has chosen the Valley Range Energy Park to be their supplier for the BYOR program. The co-op partnership was able to contract for 96.5 MW of energy supply and 62.5 MW of energy storage, the maximum available to them based on BYOR terms and conditions.

Valley Range is a 125MW solar energy generation facility collocated with a 62.5 MW Battery Energy Storage System being developed and planned east of Cortez in an unincorporated area of Montezuma County by Accelergen Energy. EEA supports Valley Range because the project is instrumental in helping us provide affordable power service through Tri-State's BYOR program. BYOR allows EEA to buy power from Valley Range for less than what we would pay Tri-State with the same reliability guarantee.  

EEA is asking our members to support their co-op and the project by sending the following letter to the Montezuma Board of County Commissioners. You can use the letter as shown, edit the letter directly, or write your own letter in the space provided. EEA will collect the letters of support and provide them to the commissioners as part of the permit application process. Thank you for your support!