Southwestern Electric Cooperative

Fighting to keep the lights on
Co-ops battle for balanced solutions to energy issues

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, demand for electricity nationally will increase by 30 percent during the next 20 years—even with an optimistic projection of a 9 percent reduction in electricity use due to increased efficiency factored in. As the economy expands, the need for power grows right along with it.

Nearly every respected analysis, however, finds that our country is running out of power. And as a result, if we don’t act soon, there’s a good chance consumers could experience brownouts and even rolling blackouts in the not-too-distant future.

A recent report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a Princeton, N.J.-based non-profit organization charged with monitoring America’s power system reliability, confirms that unless more resources come online, it will not be long before our need for power can’t be met.

The predictions made by NERC shed light on the urgent need to bolster our nation’s power grid. It’s no longer a question of if but when we need to build.

For electric co-ops, experiencing 2.6 percent overall load growth (twice the national average), we take our responsibility of maintaining a safe, reliable and affordable supply of power seriously.

Electric co-ops are recognized industry leaders in promoting energy efficiency and wise energy use.

For example, Southwestern Electric actively promotes low-interest Energy Resource Conservation loans, geothermal energy, energy audits, compact fluorescent bulb use, and energy efficient construction practices.

Simply put, the more we can do to conserve electricity and use it efficiently, the fewer power plants we’ll need in the future.

Renewable energy, like wind and solar power, holds great promise in providing electricity. Consumer-owned electric co-ops have blazed trails when it comes to developing renewables.

Wind, for example, has the potential to meet 20 percent of the country’s electricity needs. But it must overcome two primary hurdles: construction of additional high-voltage transmission lines to bring generation produced at wind farms, usually located in remote rural areas, to population centers; and intermittency—the fact that wind only blows 30 percent to 40 percent of the time, and generally not during times of peak electricity use on hot, humid, summer weekday afternoons.

Electric co-ops are heavily involved in research needed to develop better batteries to store wind and solar energy, a breakthrough that will allow these resources to become full-time sources of electricity. Additional work must take place before these batteries become viable.

All of these changes will help meet our growing demand for electricity. Yet at the end of the day, electric co-ops also need to plan for the future—which means building or buying power from new power plants.

In November 2006, Southwestern Electric Cooperative signed a 30-year contract to purchase 78 megawatts from the Plum Point Power Plant in Osceola, Ark. The Plum Point plant will provide reliable, low-cost, coal-based energy for future generations of Southwestern Electric members.

Southwestern was fortunate to have secured power when it did; power plant construction costs, which drive up the cost of power, continue to skyrocket as international demand for coal and materials like steel and concrete climbs.

Presently, 50 percent of the nation’s electricity supply and 62 percent of electric co-op power requirements come from coal. Despite rising costs, power plants built in the near-term will burn coal more cleanly and efficiently than ever before. Even more encouraging, concerns over coal’s contribution to climate change could be alleviated within a decade if power plants capture carbon dioxide, compress it, and pump it deep underground for permanent storage. This technology could become available if Congress provides sufficient funding for research and development.

At this moment, local, state, and federal lawmakers are considering additional costs on power plants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, notably carbon dioxide, which is blamed for contributing to global climate change.

On the climate change front, electric cooperatives—Southwestern Electric included—believe recommendations developed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a non-profit utility-sponsored consortium based in Palo Alto, Calif., offer a realistic framework for meaningful debate on realistic solutions.

EPRI has spelled out how U.S. electric utilities can slash carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels by 2030 (roughly 45 percent)—even as we take on about 40 percent more load. EPRI’s plans call for aggressive steps in seven principal areas: boosting energy efficiency, investing in renewable energy, expanding nuclear power capacity, capturing carbon produced by coal-fired power plants and storing it deep underground, improving the operating efficiency of coal-fired power plants, adding distributed generation resources, and putting plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on the road.

Providing more electricity and dealing with climate change are significant challenges. As we strive to keep the lights on, we’ll be encouraging lawmakers and regulators to pursue practical, long-term remedies to our nation’s energy issues based on new technology—solutions that will allow us to continue to provide safe, reliable, and affordable power in an environmentally responsible fashion.

Southwestern Electric and other cooperatives have no single solution to offer—only our hard work and a commitment to your best interests. But as we’ve done for seven decades, we’ll continue to put you, our members, first.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

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