Members Select Nonprofits to Receive $12,000

4-H Tail Twisters

Tail Twisters is a local 4-H Club based in Fort Lupton, providing hands-on, real-world learning that takes place in the community where youth have the opportunity to develop relationships, skills, and leadership, with a focus on “learning by doing.” The grant will be used to make blankets for nonprofits serving the local community.

Brigit’s Bounty

Brigit’s Bounty offers food to the local community. All food grown at its one-acre Giving Garden in Frederick is donated to community members in need. Its goal is to be a community resource with low-cost youth programs; fresh produce for residents in need; and educational resources about gardening, nutrition, and the environment. 

Erie Food Bank

The Erie Food Bank provides food assistance to those in need in Erie. It primarily supplies perishable and supplemental items that are not received through organized food drives, as well as provides assistance with utilities. Food bank volunteers also prepare holiday meal baskets. 

Graceful Oaks Youth Ranch

Graceful Oaks serves the Weld County community by working with kids and providing trauma informed animal therapeutic services. They also offer the Empowering Youth Leadership Program for teens, helping them build a foundation in leadership, including career and business skills.

Pastor’s Pantry

Pastor’s Pantry is a food pantry operating out of the Whispering Pines Church, providing food and pantry supplies to those experiencing food insecurity in Coal Creek Canyon and the surrounding area. It is open to the public and you do not need to attend the church to receive help. 

Pennock Center for Counseling

Pennock Center exists to fill a gap in mental health services by increasing access to care through the use of a sliding fee scale to determine the cost for counseling services. The center also adjusts fees to meet the needs of those experiencing financial hardship. 

Brighton, CO – United Power is pleased to announce the hiring of Jan Kulmann to the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. 

“Now, more than at any time in the cooperative’s history, having the right people in place in our organization is critical, and Jan brings a rich combination of education and experience to this vital leadership position,” said Mark A. Gabriel, United Power President and CEO. “She is the right leader for our operations transition as we step away from our current wholesale power contract.”

Kulmann is a licensed professional engineer who brings nearly 25 years of experience in the energy arena. Her background includes work in the utility industry and the oil and gas sector. She has provided direction and strategic leadership for the development of design and engineering standards and compliance programs for natural gas pipeline and electric infrastructure; the management of drilling, completion, and production facilities; and environmental, health, safety, and regulatory programs as well as strategic technical initiatives related to emissions reduction efforts, electrical power transitions, automation, process safety, and mechanical integrity. 

Before joining United Power, Kulmann served as Xcel Energy’s Senior Director of Standards & Compliance Program Development where she was responsible for the comprehensive design and engineering standards in order for the utility to achieve the clean energy transition while balancing risk, system reliability, resource adequacy, and safety.

Kulmann began her electric utility career at CenterPoint Energy in Texas, where she planned, organized, coordinated, and directed the utility’s relay and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) design group, electrical and structural design group, and substation construction design standards and materials group in the design and construction of distribution substation projects across the Houston metro area.  

Kulmann earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering, along with a minor in music performance, from Louisiana State University and a Master of Business Administration from Colorado State University. Additionally, she was re-elected to her second term as Mayor of Thornton, CO, in November.  

“We are excited to add such an accomplished and talented employee to our leadership team,” stated Gabriel. “Jan’s experience will be critical as the cooperative transitions to a distribution system operator. Establishing this new delivery model will benefit United Power members today and into the future. Controlling all the components of the power we deliver will help us ensure reliability and stabilize costs for all cooperative members.”

About United Power

United Power is a member-owned, not-for-profit electric cooperative, delivering electricity to homes, farms, and businesses throughout Colorado’s northern front range. The cooperative is one of the fastest-growing electric co-ops in the nation, and in June 2021 joined the elite ranks of cooperatives serving more than 100,000 meters. The 900-square mile service territory extends from the mountains of Coal Creek and Golden Gate Canyon, along the I-25 corridor and Carbon Valley region, to the farmlands of Brighton, Hudson, and Keenesburg. United Power is also a founding member of the NextGen Cooperative Alliance, which is dedicated to expanding the power supply and procurement options available to distribution co-ops and reforming the traditional generation and transmission business model. For more information about United Power, visit www.unitedpower.com or follow the cooperative on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

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Recently Announced Rate Change Takes Effect Jan. 1, 2024

Last month, United Power announced a rate increase taking effect Jan. 1, 2024, and while it is never easy to hear about prices going up, electricity remains one of the best values in most households. Today’s modern household is powering more appliances with electricity. It provides warmth, safety, sanitation, and entertainment. Consider what was in your home just ten or twenty years ago. How many televisions do you have today, compared with how many were in your home growing up? How many connected devices like laptops, tablets, or phones are charging in your home every day? Even something like air conditioning, which was not a standard feature in Colorado homes twenty years ago, is making the modern household more comfortable. 

When people talk about the rising cost of electricity, they often fail to notice how much more they are using. Rates at United Power have not changed since Jan. 1, 2020. During the pandemic and through the many months while inflation was running rampant in everything our members need to live — from groceries to gas — United Power rates did not change. Advanced planning was one of the key reasons we were able to hold rates steady during that period — from existing orders of heavy equipment and vehicles to belt-tightening in every function at the cooperative. United Power was able to provide stable rates while our members navigated rising prices on everything they need for their households.

The Colorado Sun recently reported on the cost of the five most common grocery items Colorado households purchase — milk, one pound of hamburger, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and a pound of coffee. They reported that over the last five years the cost of these items has risen 35%. The price of many goods has been impacted by increases in transportation costs, labor, and raw ingredients. Any homeowner who was lucky enough to lock in a low interest home loan is still seeing their monthly payment rise due to increases in property taxes and homeowners’ insurance. All of those factors also impact your utility.

Keeping the system operating efficiently and making sure we can replace and upgrade equipment where necessary are adding to our operational costs. Consider when we need to purchase land for a substation to serve a new neighborhood; United Power is paying higher and higher prices to acquire land for this development, and all those costs are paid through the rates members pay for electricity.

One of the most powerful things about being served by a cooperative is that United Power is a not-for-profit entity. The cooperative does not work for shareholders who want to see profits. Anything collected above what we need to operate is considered patronage capital — and is eventually returned to members as capital credits. United Power serves its members with the goal of providing reliable electricity without an eye on profits. 

Learn more about upcoming rate changes.

Transitions in life, both personal and professional, always have interesting twists. 

I lived the switch from conventional “hot type” typesetting to “cold type” primitive computers in my first career out of college as a newspaper reporter. The old way of making newspapers required placing individual letters — that were made of lead — into large, heavy frames in a reverse mirror image. The frames were then bolted onto giant printing machines where rolls of paper became the newspapers we read every day. The thunderous, dangerous, and noisy pressrooms gave way to an era of photo sensitive paper, waxed into big sheets, copied onto plastic and attached to the same giant printing machines. It was just the beginning of the change that would make everyone into a journalist — good and bad — with the ability to wirelessly send their stories anywhere in the world with the touch of a button. Unfortunately, it has sadly meant the demise of many printed newspapers.

The twists and turns and unintended consequences did not happen overnight. In fact, in the world of publishing, the death of local newspapers has been gradual over the decades, not a sudden crash and burn. This change has been a bit painful for those of us who still cherish the smell and feel of a Sunday morning newspaper. I have never been able to get used to the feeling of reading on an iPad; it does not give me the same warm memories as a paper rolling off the presses, making my fingers slightly dirty.

The energy transition has may parallels with newspapers that are rolling out over a quickening pace. The traditional “hot type” world of large power plants and massive transmission projects is giving way to smaller scale generation, power at the distribution system level, and thousands of households adding local resources. 

United Power is working through the ins and outs of our transition to new power suppliers and a new way of operating. We are moving from a single large supplier to more than a dozen — managing our risk through system diversity. We are looking at new ways of operating our system and trying to keep as much hyper-localized and home grown resources as possible. The hyper-localized model, including significant amounts of energy storage, is going to be required as the time to build new transmission is coupled with the closure of major coal plants. This is not a political question but the reality of the marketplace matched with the changing face of regulatory environments.

Hyper-localized generation has significant benefits for our communities as it keeps tax dollars in our region, brings a higher level of reliability and control, and reduces the stress on the transmission grid at a time when more and more electrification is occurring. Our new fuel mix will dramatically reduce carbon intensity rates as we blend natural gas, renewables, and storage while also making the best use of the Board of Directors’ investments in the distribution system over the decades.

For United Power, the transition will occur in phases. Knowing our low tolerance for risk, we have constructed a portfolio that in the short-term mirrors much of what we have with our current supplier in terms of capacity — albeit slightly lower in cost than what we expect it to be in the next 24 months — with a significant change in the mix of energy. As capacity becomes less expensive and markets develop in the short time beyond that window (2026-2027), we will become experts in managing and operating our system with the new tools in place.

As one of my business school professors always mused, “The future is already here, it is just not widely distributed yet.” At United Power we are committed to this transition for the benefit of our members.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions.