At its regular Board Meeting in March, the SMPA Board of directors accepted two recommendations from the SMPA Staff: The first was to begin contractual negotiations on a transition away from its “All-Power-Requirements” contract with current wholesale power provider, Tri-State Generation and Transmission (Tri-State). SMPA may transition to a “Partial Requirements” contract, thereby allowing room in SMPA’s total power load, for service from another supplier. The other was to select a finalist from the recent SMPA Request for Proposals (RFP) for alternative power supply providers. The selected finalist was Denver-based Guzman Energy.
Since 2017, the SMPA Board has been evaluating its wholesale electric supply contract (WESC) with Tri-State and gathering the data necessary to determine if adding a different source of wholesale electricity would be advantageous to the membership. A detailed cost analysis was presented to the Board during a recent Executive Session. Based, partly, upon this analysis, the board, in open session, directed staff to move forward with the negotiations.
