Fugate Brings Wealth of Utility Marketing and Community Affairs Experience

Brighton, CO – United Power announces Trista Fugate as its new Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer in January. Fugate comes to the cooperative after spending the past two years with Platte River Power Authority in Fort Collins and more than twelve years with Pedernales Electric Cooperative, the largest cooperative utility in the country. At United Power, she will be responsible for directing all phases of the cooperative’s member marketing and new program initiatives, including residential, commercial and industrial programs, products and services.

“I’m excited to join the United Power team at such a pivotal time,” Fugate said. “The cooperative model is ideal for today’s changing energy environment, and I look forward to helping shape our future while continuing the tradition of providing true benefits to our members.”

Before joining United Power, Fugate served as Platte River’s Director of Community and Government Affairs, where she led strategic outreach efforts to build and strengthen relationships with stakeholders, community partners and organizations within the utility’s owner communities of Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland. She also directed the communications and marketing team, responsible for developing all internal and external communications, including promotional materials for energy efficiency offerings, and oversaw the Efficiency Works^TM programs, providing technical and financial support to help customers use energy more wisely.

Fugate has nearly 20 years of experience working across the spectrum of the electric utility industry, holding positions at a municipal electric utility, a distribution cooperative and a generation and transmission utility. She has worked for CPS Energy in San Antonio, the nation’s largest municipal utility, and held leadership roles with Pedernales Electric Cooperative, which serves more than 365,000 active accounts in Texas. During her career, Fugate has focused on strategic communications and marketing, community and economic development, community engagement, conservation and energy efficiency, corporate social responsibility, local government relations and public affairs.

“United Power is proud to welcome Trista to the United Power family,” said Mark A. Gabriel, United Power’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Her experience in member and community engagement and program planning will be critical in the cooperative’s next chapter as we prepare to separate from our longtime wholesale energy supplier and begin navigating the path toward more energy autonomy with new providers. Her insight with one of the nation’s largest cooperatives will also be invaluable to United Power as we continue to grow and seek the best ways to serve our members.”

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 cooperatives in the nation, and in June 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, dedicated to expanding the power supply and procurement options and reforming the traditional Generation and Transmission (G&T) business model. For more information about the cooperative, visit www.unitedpower.com or follow them on social media Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram.

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Date: 4/29/2022
United Power filed a non-conditional Notice of Intent to Withdraw from our power supplier in compliance with a recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruling. This changes our previously announced Tri-State exit date of Jan. 1, 2024 to May 1, 2024.

At United Power we continue with our sole focus of bringing power to our members at the greatest value.

During the past several years we have attempted to work with Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, our power supplier, toward this end. Unfortunately, our G&T has been unwilling to make any changes in the pursuit of this goal, saddling United Power with some of the highest cost, carbon intensive power in the State of Colorado.

We have been unsuccessful in negotiating a revised contract with our G&T that would have allowed us to lower costs, expand member options, bring lower carbon generation and provide for a new future. Therefore, as of December 14, 2021 we have formally filed at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) our intent to withdraw from Tri-State effective January 1, 2024. The Board of Directors is strongly in the support of this action.

During my nine months as your President and Chief Executive Officer, I have presented our power supplier with numerous offers of settlement that would have continued our membership relationship while also allowing us to procure lower cost, cleaner power options. Despite many meetings and requests, the G&T has been mute on our offers and instead reacted through the legal system. I have agreed on at least two occasions to mediation with no response.

Instead of working with us in the pursuit of lower-cost, cleaner options, Tri-State has resisted these developments. Tri-State recently purchased additional coal generation, is limiting our members’ ability to add more carbon free generation and is penalizing additional storage on our system. Tri- State also offers non-members preferable transmission rates over those of us who have invested in their system for decades.

United Power has been a leader in the deployment of innovative new technologies and in the integration of renewable energy resources. Currently United Power has 84 megawatts of renewable generation on its system including 46 megawatts of utility scale solar, Colorado’s largest battery storage project, and more than 6,800 rooftop systems. Tri-State’s policies include penalties if a utility exceeds 5% of generation other than from the G&T.

United Power represents nearly 20% of the G&T’s annual revenue and is more than twice the size of the next largest cooperative. United Power joins Delta Montrose Electric Association and Kit Carson who have exited the G&T in the last five years. At least six other cooperatives are currently considering a potential exit.

United Power will be seeking alternative power supply and the use of transmission as outlined by FERC as part of Open Access Transmission Tariffs. Prior to January 1, 2024, United Power will work with other power suppliers and prepare for the transition from our G&T.

We do not take this decision lightly. Please feel free to reach out to me and other members of the United Power staff with any questions.

The final round of Member Choice Grants for 2021 have been awarded. United Power is proud to announce Blawk Hawk’s High Country Auxiliary and the Mead High School Band have been selected from nominations submitted by our members to receive grants this round.

The cooperative introduced Member Choice Grants in early 2020, asking members to nominate nonprofit organizations within the service territory they would like to see us help support. The grant nomination process gives members a voice and helps ensure we are supporting causes they truly care about.

High Country Auxiliary

High-Country Auxiliary has existed for more than 50 years to aid and support Timberline Fire Protection District, Gilpin County Animal Response Team, and other emergency service organizations within the district. This includes providing sustenance or purchasing items for first responders or providing scholarships for training classes.

Mead High School Band

The Mead High School Band takes great pride in offering a variety of performing ensembles, including an inclusive percussion ensemble for students with intellectual disabilities. The band seeks to balance performances in educational settings and festivals with performances in the Longmont and Mead communities.

How Components Work to Reduce Outage Times and Improve Reliability

United Power’s outage restoration system is among the most advanced and innovative in the country. While the cooperative has a national reputation for its forward-thinking beneficial energy projects, behind the scenes it has also dedicated significant resources to improve system reliability and reduce member outage times. The result is one that utilizes a sophisticated network of automated field devices that allow system operators and line crews to respond and resolve outages more quickly while often also preventing larger outages affecting more members.

Automated field devices fall into a varying spectrum from simple to complex, but they all work in conjunction to identify, isolate and, when possible, resolve “faults.” A fault is when the flow of electricity is abnormal or interrupted and can be caused by any number of incidents, such as weather, vegetation or equipment failures. Automated devices detect these faults and respond to them. Each type of device has a different response but all have the same purpose – to keep your lights on.

Fuses are not automated, but they are the simplest and least expensive means of protecting the cooperative’s system from fault damage and preventing larger outages. Fuses are “sacrificial” devices used to isolate small areas. They blow quickly in response to a fault, usually resulting in a relatively small outage impacting only a handful of members while maintaining service to any remaining members downstream of the fault. Line crews are able to quickly and easily replace these devices to restore power. Think of fuses like GFCI outlets in your home. When they detect an abnormal current, they shut off power to protect you.

The next level of protection against faults are reclosers and breakers. Although reclosers and breakers are technically separate devices, they function in similar ways. They protect much larger service areas and can respond to a fault in just a few seconds. This fault response is the most common cause of power “blinks.” When your house lights dim temporarily or you lose power briefly, this is caused by a breaker detecting a fault and responding. Breakers will attempt to reclose automatically to determine if the fault is still present. In the event of a sustained fault, system operators can reclose some breakers remotely once the fault has been cleared, limiting outage times for members impacted. While fuses in your home will shut off power to a single outlet, a breaker will shut off power to entire section of your home when it detects an overloaded circuit.

Switches are another remote device United Power system operators can use to quickly restore power to members affected by an outage. They are used to reroute the distribution of power to restore members while isolating the segment of line with the fault, also known as a redundancy, or the ability to serve members from more than one substation. Before remote switches, lineworkers had to manually activate switches, which required a lot of manpower and guesswork. In most cases, rerouting power with a switcher can restore power to most members within minutes or even seconds. In a few cases, it can restore power to all members. United Power is in the process of upgrading more switches to remote field devices.

System redundancies allow United Power to serve approximately 90 percent of its members from at least two different substations or circuits. The cooperative is continually looking for solutions to construct backup facilities serving remaining members but have been limited by geographical challenges. The approach to installing automated and remote field devices is a strategic method that allows the cooperative to better serve members, resulting in fewer outages where possible, shorter outages where not and improved overall system reliability.

“What we’re doing with automated devices is well ahead of your average electric utility,” said Engineering Director Robert Maxwell. “We’ve been continually reviewing our system and its performance to identify where installing automated devices would best serve our members.”