Located near Burlington, the project will supply electricity to Tri-State’s 44 member cooperatives across Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming, helping the association to diversify its energy portfolio.
The latest 25-year power purchase agreement is claimed to be Tri-State largest wind energy PPA to date and the association currently supplies 23% of the energy from renewable resources.
To be built, owned and operated by a NextEra subsidiary, the project, which has been named so because of its proximity to the national historic landmark Kit Carson County Carousel, will interconnect to Tri-State transmission facilities in the Burlington area.
Tri-State senior vice president Brad Nebergall said the agreement is a timely and cost-effective opportunity for the company to diversify its generation fleet and strengthen its expertise in integrating variable energy resources.
"Given existing transmission constraints in eastern Colorado, one of the important factors in this agreement with NextEra was having the project completed at the same time as those system upgrades," added Nebergall.
"We can’t reliably purchase and deliver the output from Carousel to our member systems without the appropriate transmission infrastructure."
The latest agreement will help Tri-State meet the Colorado and New Mexico renewable energy mandates.
But the association said that such mandates are unnecessary and that the not-for-profit cooperative’s resource decisions should be should be directed by its democratically-elected board.
