By Kent Singer, CREA Executive Director
The Colorado Rural Electric Association usually hosts an annual meeting in February in downtown Denver. Electric co-op board members and staff from across Colorado come together to attend education sessions, meet with legislators, learn about important industry trends, chat with each other about developments at their co-ops, and have a little fun. Since we were limited to a virtual annual meeting in 2021 due to the pandemic, it was great to get back together in person in 2022.
We intentionally schedule the annual meeting during the first couple of months of the year to overlap with each year’s session of the Colorado General Assembly. We schedule meetings with our legislators to learn about their activities and priorities; they make the laws that impact how electric co-ops provide service to rural Colorado.
This year, a record number of legislators made presentations to our group, and we also hosted a successful legislative reception. The co-ops are supporting a bill to create a grant program for electric co-ops to develop microgrids, so it was great to have a chance to talk with legislators about the reasons behind the bill and about its benefits.
While the primary purpose of our annual meeting is business, this year’s meeting also coincided with the Super Bowl. We decided to make the most of that happy accident with a blowout party. We set up a hotel conference room like a sports bar complete with big screen TVs, cornhole matches, trivia games, plenty of food and drinks — everything you need to properly enjoy the uniquely American spectacle that is the Super Bowl. And while many past Super Bowls have not lived up to the hype, the outcome of LVI was in doubt until the last minute.
Since our boys in Predominantly Orange were not participants in the action on the field, many people at our party were more interested in the commercials than the game. The crop of commercials this year featured, among other things, robo dogs, flying horses, real dogs, real horses, cute kids and, of course, Peyton Manning. But whereas in most years the commercials featured traditional consumer products (beer, chips, beer), this year the focus was on a couple of new categories: cryptocurrency and electric vehicles.
Why are Super Bowl commercials relevant to Colorado’s electric co-ops? As for cryptocurrency (or, as I refer to it, Digital Snake Oil), it takes extraordinary quantities of electricity to support the computing power that is the foundation of the “currency.” Founders of crypto companies site their operations in places where electricity is cheap and plentiful to support their insatiable need for power. While it might seem that this industry would be a boon for electric utilities, the long-term viability of these companies is unclear.
EVs, on the other hand, are a different story. There is little doubt that, in the coming years, the market penetration of many makes and models of EVs will grow dramatically. The investment by carmakers (GM, Kia, BMW, Nissan, Toyota) in flashy Super Bowl ads is just the latest sign of the ongoing market shift.
As for rural Colorado, the introduction this year of the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning as well as the electric Chevy Silverado and Rivian pickup trucks may be a game changer. Electric co-ops across the state will be a critical part of creating the charging network to serve this new fleet of vehicles.
As for the ads themselves, I got a kick out of the BMW ad featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Zeus and Salma Hayek as his wife Hera. Pretty funny to see Zeus zapping the electricity in his new Palm Springs retirement home. And as much as I hate to admit it, as a dog lover, I couldn’t help myself from tearing up when the robo dog was revived by the battery in the new Kia! Given the power of Super Bowl ads to drive, or at least anticipate, consumer choices, it sure looks like the EV age is fast approaching.
One final note on our Super Bowl party: When the huge American flag was unfurled across the field at SoFi Stadium and country music star Mickey Guyton sang the first notes of the Star Spangled Banner, a funny thing happened. Even though the party was in a downtown Denver office building a thousand miles from the actual Super Bowl, amidst the din of 150 people engaged in loud conversations, all of our co-op folks quickly quieted down, stood up, took off their caps, held their hands over their hearts, and either sang along with or listened respectfully to our national anthem.
I hope this scene was repeated at many other Super Bowl parties across America, but I know it happened at least once in Denver. Electric co-op folks: Super People for a Super Bowl.
Kent Singer is the executive director of CREA and offers a statewide perspective on issues affecting electric cooperatives. CREA is the trade association for your electric co-op, the 21 other electric co-ops in Colorado and its power supply co-op.