Thank You MEC Members!
We received overwhelming support from Mohave Electric Cooperative (MEC) members on the Reliability for Rural Arizona project, and we cannot thank you enough.
MEC’s main generation and transmission provider, Arizona Electric Power Cooperative (AEPCO) is also a not-for-profit cooperative formed by AZ co-ops including MEC. Together we share a generation facility called Apache Station down in Cochise County. We’ve joined forces in an effort to install 2 additional flexible, natural gas units at Apache and 2 new units here in MEC’s service territory. These units will increase reliability here locally, support our renewable energy solar facilities, keep member rates low, and provide additional support during unplanned outages.
As you recall, July was hot – MEC surpassed our peak load providing the highest amount of electricity in our 77-year history. We have a growing population in Bullhead City and the surrounding areas, and each household is using more and more electricity, which means MEC needs to provide more and more electricity. These units will generate more electricity to meet member loads now and in the future.
As you know, solar only works when the sun is shining, and the sun doesn’t shine at night. These units can provide electricity to us at nighttime or during weather events when our solar and renewable energy systems aren’t operating.
Being a member-owned, not-for-profit, MEC makes every effort to keep our rates low. In fact, we have the lowest overall electricity costs among all the cooperatives in the state. 1 of the ways we keep costs low is to look at power costs among all sources of energy and buy or generate that source to keep rates low. These units will allow AEPCO to generate more energy, including generation in MEC’s service territory that we can purchase from AEPCO. And MEC can avoid buying expensive energy on the market.
Also, these 2 units will help provide power within MEC’s network, which would allow us to potentially power emergency locations such as key city and county centers and hospitals in a massive outage.
As you can see, there are multiple benefits to MEC – reliability; affordability; and outage support. This is a multiple-step project, and we appreciate and thank you, Members, for helping us start step number 1. We look forward to sharing more updates with you in the future and more ways that you can participate. Thank you again.
What’s Happening
- November 10 – Office Closed for Veteran’s Day
- November 11 – Join MEC at Veteran’s Parade
- November 18 – Operation Cool Shade Bullhead City Pickup
- November 20 – Operation Cool Shade Kingman Pickup
- November 23 & 24 – Office Closed for Thanksgiving
- December 1 – Join MEC at the Boombox Parade
- December 25 – Office Closed for Christmas
- January 1 – Office Closed for New Year’s Day