Happy Anniversary Mohave Electric Cooperative (MEC) members! On July 3rd, MEC celebrates 77 years of providing electric service to the area.
Reliability has always been at the forefront of our minds when providing electricity. This involves securing power generation, capacity, transmission, and distributing the electricity to your homes and businesses. When identifying power generation sources, we purchase primarily through firm contracts and a portion of MEC’s power is purchased on the wholesale purchased power open market. The market at times can be very stable and affordable and other times skyrocket in costs, usually after a weather-related disaster such as the 2021 winter storms in Texas.
Over the past decade, MEC has continually made investments in our own power generation, including renewable energy, and storage sources to limit the amount of power generation we purchase on the open market and in return help “fix” our costs to a known dollar amount.
California is another factor that affects the open market. California is historically known for not having enough power generation for its ever-increasing population, and by default, ever-increasing electrical load, and then enters the market creating premium prices for electricity that would otherwise be available to small players, like MEC, for reasonable costs.
Recently, the Lake Havasu Today’s News Herald reprinted the positive news written by the Associated Press – that California is unlikely to run out of power this summer because of heavy rains this past winter. For multiple years California has been unable to use their hydroelectric facilities for electricity generation due to drought and water shortages. The rain this last winter has “filled the state’s reservoirs enough to restart hydroelectric power plants that were dormant during the drought.”
Forecasting power supply costs is no easy task as none of us have a crystal ball. However, we welcome the idea that costs and supply may remain reasonable this summer. The market can always ‘change on a dime’ so we constantly monitor the market every hour of every day.
Our power purchase forecasting and planning goes well beyond the summer season. Stay tuned for news on our strategies to deal with future increased demand for reliable and affordable electricity. And stay safe this summer.
What’s Happening
- Monday, July 3 – MEC’s 77th Anniversary
- Tuesday, July 4 – Office Closed for Independence Day
- Friday – Sunday, August 4, 5, 6 – Join MEC at Chaos on the Colorado River Survivalist Expo h Thursday, August 31 – $5,000 SunWatts Education Application Deadline