Grand Valley Power members expect their cooperative to deliver electricity they can count on, at an affordable cost. Members want their cooperative to be environmentally responsible. This sounds pretty simple. But in today’s chaotic world where we deal with escalating costs, unreliable supply chains, erratic markets, and regulatory pressures from all directions, it is anything but simple. To meet member expectations, GVP leaders knew that we needed an edge.
That edge materialized in 2023 when the Biden Administration announced a grant program that would put electric cooperatives on a more equal footing with big power providers in managing a transition to clean energy. Specifically designated as the Empowering Rural America or New ERA program, this initiative aligns with Grand Valley Power’s Empowering Lives with Hometown Service mission. Staff members set out on the painstaking process of applying for a federal grant. After almost 18 months of diligent work, their efforts were awarded in early January of this year. GVP Board President Brian Woods executed a commitment letter with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to lock in more than $10 million dollars in New ERA grant funding for the cooperative.
GVP’s New ERA investment will be used to procure more than 26 megawatts of clean, renewable energy from the Garnett Mesa solar agrivoltaics facility under development in Delta, Colorado. This is the equivalent of the energy needed to provide electricity to nearly 6,600 homes per year. The New ERA funding supports investment that puts Grand Valley Rural Power Lines, Inc. on track to meet 100% of its consumers’ energy needs with renewable resources at a lower cost by 2030. The cooperative’s members will directly benefit as wholesale power costs will be reduced by more than $700,000 per year for 15 years beginning in 2028.
In recent years, proponents of local distributed generation (better known as rooftop solar) have urged GVP to promote what they called “cheap local power.” This grant sets up our cooperative with renewable, sustainable energy from a state-of-the-art Western Slope resource that will provide four times more energy than produced by GVP’s distributed generation customers. We will pay a cost per kilowatt-hour for this energy that is less than half what we must pay to those customers for the energy they produce under Colorado’s net metering law.
Grand Valley Power staff has also worked to secure additional commitments of more than $2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Colorado Energy Office to boost the cooperative’s efforts to reduce the risk of wildfires in forested areas that we serve.
While President Trump has hit the pause button on many of these grants, we are optimistic that the funding will still come through in a timely fashion. This optimism is grounded in the understanding that the primary beneficiaries of these programs are consumers including the members of Grand Valley Power — not crooked corporate speculators like Solyndra and its ilk.
The edge provided with this grant would not have been possible if the GVP Board of Directors had not had the foresight to give notice to Xcel of its intention to terminate power purchases from that entity. Likewise, it would not have been possible without the cooperation of Guzman Energy, which deserves credit for a big assist. At the boots on the ground level, the teamwork put forth by GVP staff who rallied together to get this project across the finish line was nothing short of remarkable.
Please join me in thanking everyone who contributed to this monumental success!
Author: Tom Walch, Chief Executive Officer
