Thank You MEC Members — Twice!
In the last Currents article, I thanked all of our members who supported the Reliability for Rural Arizona project which includes bringing new, low emission, natural gas turbines to Mohave Electric Cooperative’s (MEC) service territory in Fort Mohave.
Mohave Electric Cooperative’s main generation and transmission provider, Arizona Electric Power Cooperative (AEPCO) is also a not-for-profit formed by AZ co-ops including MEC as a partial owner. We share a generation facility in Cochise County and are bringing 2 quick-start, flexible natural gas units in Cochise and in Mohave Counties to prepare for growth, reliability, and affordability.
Double thanks to members for first supporting our efforts at the Arizona Corporation Commission who provided unanimous approval in October. And second thanks to members who supported our efforts as we just received the next level of approval from the Mohave County Board of Supervisors. The approval on December 4 confirms the need for the generation, the need for the site to be local within MEC’s service territory, and the importance of having emergency backup power to key institutions like hospitals, cooling centers, fire stations, and other government entities during a major outage. The project also has the potential to provide other neighboring utilities with outage support.
Many more steps to come, with in-person meetings, and additional public comments. We welcome your feedback and look forward to sharing project updates and benefits with you.
Power Market Instability & Cost Adjustor
Mohave Electric strives to provide you with reliable power at affordable prices. MEC monitors the power market every hour of every day to secure the best prices for our members. 2 Currents magazines ago, I wrote about grid stability, market instability, and keeping members apprised of an ever-changing situation.
Until projects like the Reliability for Rural Arizona mentioned above are built and operational, MEC must continue to weather the ever-changing power market storm. The latest update is our Purchased Power Adjustor (PPA) charge is changing to a $.02 per kWh. The main cause is the rising costs of energy. For example, different types of fuel are used in producing power for the grid, and these fuel prices have only continued to increase over the years.
MEC experienced, in the last year alone, $6.1 million in increased, unplanned power costs including costs incurred from a generation turbine outage, unexpected increase in fuel adjustors from generation and transmission providers, and millions in reduced savings from a battery infrastructure project delay (now currently in operation).
The cost of energy/power changes minute-by-minute and MEC will continue to do everything we can to manage our external and internal costs and review options to reduce the PPA charge. Please read the article in the middle of the magazine and look for the letter from us dated November 30. For any member who is experiencing hardship or needs assistance with their bill, please call our Member Service department at (928) 763-1100 to discuss payment plans and other resources available to help our members.