Hodge, Whitmore Honored
Friday | November 3, 2017
Mary Hodge, Adams County Commissioner, and Troy Whitmore, United Power Public Affairs Officer received the distinguished Alumni of the Plains award from Pro 15 at their annual Fall Conference held in October.
Read more >
Home Appliances: 6 Ways to Save
Friday | February 25, 2022
Take some easy steps to save on the operation of your appliances, or boost your savings with a new appliance rebate from your co-op.
Read more >
How to Modernize the Electric Grid: Rethinking Our Vision
Monday | August 2, 2021
Modernization of the electric grid should not be the singular focus of spending in the United States, rather we should also be targeting our efforts and dollars at specific projects that will make the most immediate impacts.
Read more >
Title
Industry Standard in System Reliability
/sites/default/files/styles/news_card_553x430_/public/news/Nov2021_NL_SystemReliability.jpg?h=45932144&itok=twbW3RYA
Monday | February 14, 2022
Card Teaser
Since altering its maintenance practices a few years ago, United Power’s reliability has significantly improved, as have its outage numbers.
United Power Consistently, Significantly Better than National Average
United Power understands the most important thing its members want is consistently reliable power. Being able to deliver uninterrupted power is prominently weighed in how the cooperative defines success each year. Since altering its maintenance practices a few years ago, United Power’s reliability has significantly improved, as have its outage numbers. Already an industry leader in automated field devices and other innovative projects, the cooperative is also trending well below the national average in utility outage times, setting yet another standard for others to emulate.
The national average for outage duration among electric utilities in the United States has consistently hovered around 120 minutes per meter. This means the average electric consumer can expect to experience approximately two hours of outage time at their home over the course of a year. When United Power’s operations team instituted a new data-driven maintenance plan in 2017, its average outage times resembled the national averages. In the four years following the plan’s launch, the cooperative’s outage times per meter have dropped below 70 minutes.
The new maintenance practice focuses on analyzing data collected across thousands of miles of line to isolate the worst performing segments. With these segments identified, targeted maintenance projects can be scheduled to improve their performance.
“When you target maintenance efforts at the worst performing parts of the system it improves reliability for members served off of it,” said Bryant Robbins, United Power’s Chief Operating Officer. “Maintenance is an ongoing process, but as long as we continue analyzing the data, isolating problem sections and targeting our maintenance efforts to improve them, it improves the whole system’s reliability and resilience.”
Devices on the system, such as enhanced technology in substations and advanced metering equipment, collect data and transfer it back to system operators. In the event of an outage, these devices can capture important information, such as time, location and sequence-of-events. Armed with this, lineworkers in the field can use the information to restore power to members more quickly, which also contributes to decreased outage times. Without this information, not only would identifying problematic areas be difficult, or even impossible, it would also create additional delays in power restoration as lineworkers inspect miles of line to find the cause.
Some system improvements have served dual functions. United Power recently published its comprehensive fire mitigation plan, which includes new standards and program initiatives primarily focused on areas of the territory that are particularly at risk of wildfires, such as Coal Creek and Golden Gate Canyons. In December, storms blew through the territory with wind speeds in excess of 115 mph, including the storm that ultimately fueled the Marshall Fire. The cooperative activated its fire mitigation protocols during these windstorms, and due to proactive upgrades only experienced a few small outages.
“Our maintenance and system improvement efforts are already paying off for our members,” said Robbins. “Implementing this new maintenance plan has been effective and is proving its value. It’s hard to estimate how many outages you’ve prevented when you don’t have them, but our proactive efforts have gone a long way in helping prevent and/or quickly resolving outages.”
Regardless of the size or length of outage, United Power is continually investigating what causes them and how it can implement new practices to decrease their impact to members and duration. From system redundancies allowing the cooperative to restore power from a secondary location while repairs are being made to deploying an industry-leading number of automated devices, improving system reliability is one of United Power’s core goals.
Title
January Message from Mark A. Gabriel
/sites/default/files/styles/news_card_553x430_/public/news/CEO_Message_85.jpg?h=45932144&itok=fpbFupeq
Monday | January 6, 2025
Card Teaser
A message to United Power members from the cooperative's President & Chief Executive Officer.
Alice:“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
This quote from Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is often paraphrased, “If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will get you there.” It speaks to the fact that a lack of direction can create challenges instead of opportunities and simply reinforces the status quo.
Having strategic direction, especially in times of significant societal and technological change, is critical. That is why the amazing team at United Power, supported by your Board of Directors, has unveiled the second version of Our Cooperative Roadmap (Roadmap). This document gives the co-op its direction and helps us screen activities in — as well as out.
The Roadmap v1.0 led us to where we are today. We have reduced our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than 26% since May 1 and successfully raised $700 million to evolve as an independent utility and meet the needs of our communities and more than 113,000 members. The Roadmap helped us obtain $261 million through the Empowering Rural America (New ERA) Program to support the transition to a cleaner energy supply and hyper-localize our resources. It clarified our technology investments, how we interact with members, and our role in supporting our communities.
Much has changed nearly three years after we unveiled the initial Roadmap. The western United States is edging closer to a power market and new power sources have come online. More members are adding solar panels and purchasing electric vehicles. But much has also remained the same, such as Colorado’s goal of 80% reduction in GHG emissions over 2005 levels by 2030 — a goal we will meet or exceed by helping members such as those in the oil and gas industry achieve their targets simply by electrifying the production facilities.
The Roadmap v2.0 maintains its focus on four critical areas that lie at the heart of what we do as a member-owned electric cooperative:
Empower and Engage with Members and Communities. This critical element ties directly to United Power’s Community Benefit Plan through New ERA. Our dedicated focus on supporting communities and members made creating the benefit plan a simple task for our team.
Provide Flexible, Affordable, Responsible Power and Services. United Power’s hyperlocalization strategy has resulted in significant deployment of battery energy storage systems, with more than 110 MWs spread across nine substations. It already proved valuable during last summer’s peak. This industry-leading deployment means we can benefit from times when power prices are low, using the stored energy when demand (and prices) are high.
Continuously Optimize the Electric Distribution System. As we move toward becoming a distribution system operator (DSO), focusing on local generation and control, our system investments are made with your future needs in mind. We installed a new outage management system in 2024 that, coupled with our advanced metering infrastructure, gives us better real-time operational data.
Achieve and Maintain Business Agility and Resilience. We will be replacing our distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) in 2025 to better manage system operations, and are rolling out a new asset management tool to improve our response times and better manage material and projects.
Underpinning Our Cooperative Roadmap are the amazing women and men of United Power and the foundational responsibilities they bring to running your cooperative every day.
Lewis Carroll’s words resonate for me when he said, “One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.” It sure sounds so to me.
As always, feel free to reach out to me with your questions, comments, and concerns.
Title
January Message from Mark A. Gabriel
/sites/default/files/styles/news_card_553x430_/public/news/CEO_Message.jpg?h=45932144&itok=pNegmSzP
Tuesday | January 2, 2024
Card Teaser
A message to United Power members from the cooperative's President & Chief Executive Officer.
Along with the honor of operating an electric cooperative on behalf of you, our members, comes the accountability of being prepared for the changing future in energy. Two recent, recurrent themes have emerged that emphasize the need for United Power to work diligently to make Our Cooperative Roadmap a reality.
The first is the need to continue investing in the grid, and the second is an ongoing concern that the need for capacity — the backbone of reliable power — is getting perilously close to a crisis. Both issues tend to focus on the problem. United Power is actively seeking solutions.
There has been a lot of talk recently about investing significant financial resources in the grid. The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law include funding to target large-scale projects over the next decade. These investments are needed and welcomed, but the completion estimates are measured in years or even decades. Meeting the needs of a growing enterprise like United Power is at least four to five years away, even with aggressive siting and execution.
People tend to think of the grid as the large power lines that deliver electricity from power plants miles away. Much of the energy transition challenge is that a lot of low or non-carbon generation is located far from population centers. Coupled with permitting challenges, supply chain constraints, and a confusing financing model, large-scale projects just take time.
But the grid also includes distribution systems, operated by utilities like United Power. It is the main conduit to our members and requires as much — or more — investment as its larger cousins. Your Board of Directors has continuously supported budgets to upgrade and expand critical infrastructure, and these investments have paid off. United Power has one of the best distribution networks in the country, evidenced by high reliability numbers, rapid outage response, and data-driven system management.
A robust distribution grid is also critical to the second issue — the potential for seasonal power shortages.
The North American Reliability Corporation (NERC), responsible for assessing and enforcing reliability standards, recently found the country is at an elevated risk of having insufficient energy supplies to meet demand in extreme conditions. The reasons for this potential shortfall range from coal and nuclear plant closures and an expanded reliance on natural gas to the increased electrification of everything.
“Extreme cold weather events can cause electricity demand to deviate significantly from historical forecasts. Electricity demand in winter is closely tied to outside temperature. As electric heat pumps and heating systems become more prevalent, their combined effect on system demand is even more pronounced,” NERC stated.
The industry has tried to slow the energy transition and continue operating money-losing coal plants instead of proposing solutions. And, importantly, there are solutions. This is where United Power’s strategy of hyper-localizing generation and storage comes into play.
As we prepare for our upcoming power supply transition, United Power is adding significant amounts of battery storage, spread across our system. We are locating natural gas peaking units tied in to the distribution — versus transmission — networks and contracting with power supplies closer to the communities we serve. This reduces line losses, improves reliability, and keeps tax dollars local. We will couple this with efficiency programs, support any members who want to generate part of their own power through solar, and expand demand response options now that we will have a realistic peak window.
Of course, we will continue to get power from generation plants and support efforts to build out the transmission grid as it will continue to have a role in a modern electric enterprise. But, we will focus on what we can do locally.
As always, please feel free to reach out with your questions, comments, or concerns. United Power welcomes the opportunity to meet with your community groups and discuss the cooperative’s response to the changing industry.
Hodge, Whitmore Honored
Friday | November 3, 2017
Mary Hodge, Adams County Commissioner, and Troy Whitmore, United Power Public Affairs Officer received the distinguished Alumni of the Plains award from Pro 15 at their annual Fall Conference held in October.
Read more >
Home Appliances: 6 Ways to Save
Friday | February 25, 2022
Take some easy steps to save on the operation of your appliances, or boost your savings with a new appliance rebate from your co-op.
Read more >
How to Modernize the Electric Grid: Rethinking Our Vision
Monday | August 2, 2021
Modernization of the electric grid should not be the singular focus of spending in the United States, rather we should also be targeting our efforts and dollars at specific projects that will make the most immediate impacts.
Read more >
Title
Industry Standard in System Reliability
/sites/default/files/styles/news_card_553x430_/public/news/Nov2021_NL_SystemReliability.jpg?h=45932144&itok=twbW3RYA
Monday | February 14, 2022
Card Teaser
Since altering its maintenance practices a few years ago, United Power’s reliability has significantly improved, as have its outage numbers.
United Power Consistently, Significantly Better than National Average
United Power understands the most important thing its members want is consistently reliable power. Being able to deliver uninterrupted power is prominently weighed in how the cooperative defines success each year. Since altering its maintenance practices a few years ago, United Power’s reliability has significantly improved, as have its outage numbers. Already an industry leader in automated field devices and other innovative projects, the cooperative is also trending well below the national average in utility outage times, setting yet another standard for others to emulate.
The national average for outage duration among electric utilities in the United States has consistently hovered around 120 minutes per meter. This means the average electric consumer can expect to experience approximately two hours of outage time at their home over the course of a year. When United Power’s operations team instituted a new data-driven maintenance plan in 2017, its average outage times resembled the national averages. In the four years following the plan’s launch, the cooperative’s outage times per meter have dropped below 70 minutes.
The new maintenance practice focuses on analyzing data collected across thousands of miles of line to isolate the worst performing segments. With these segments identified, targeted maintenance projects can be scheduled to improve their performance.
“When you target maintenance efforts at the worst performing parts of the system it improves reliability for members served off of it,” said Bryant Robbins, United Power’s Chief Operating Officer. “Maintenance is an ongoing process, but as long as we continue analyzing the data, isolating problem sections and targeting our maintenance efforts to improve them, it improves the whole system’s reliability and resilience.”
Devices on the system, such as enhanced technology in substations and advanced metering equipment, collect data and transfer it back to system operators. In the event of an outage, these devices can capture important information, such as time, location and sequence-of-events. Armed with this, lineworkers in the field can use the information to restore power to members more quickly, which also contributes to decreased outage times. Without this information, not only would identifying problematic areas be difficult, or even impossible, it would also create additional delays in power restoration as lineworkers inspect miles of line to find the cause.
Some system improvements have served dual functions. United Power recently published its comprehensive fire mitigation plan, which includes new standards and program initiatives primarily focused on areas of the territory that are particularly at risk of wildfires, such as Coal Creek and Golden Gate Canyons. In December, storms blew through the territory with wind speeds in excess of 115 mph, including the storm that ultimately fueled the Marshall Fire. The cooperative activated its fire mitigation protocols during these windstorms, and due to proactive upgrades only experienced a few small outages.
“Our maintenance and system improvement efforts are already paying off for our members,” said Robbins. “Implementing this new maintenance plan has been effective and is proving its value. It’s hard to estimate how many outages you’ve prevented when you don’t have them, but our proactive efforts have gone a long way in helping prevent and/or quickly resolving outages.”
Regardless of the size or length of outage, United Power is continually investigating what causes them and how it can implement new practices to decrease their impact to members and duration. From system redundancies allowing the cooperative to restore power from a secondary location while repairs are being made to deploying an industry-leading number of automated devices, improving system reliability is one of United Power’s core goals.
Title
January Message from Mark A. Gabriel
/sites/default/files/styles/news_card_553x430_/public/news/CEO_Message_85.jpg?h=45932144&itok=fpbFupeq
Monday | January 6, 2025
Card Teaser
A message to United Power members from the cooperative's President & Chief Executive Officer.
Alice:“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
This quote from Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is often paraphrased, “If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will get you there.” It speaks to the fact that a lack of direction can create challenges instead of opportunities and simply reinforces the status quo.
Having strategic direction, especially in times of significant societal and technological change, is critical. That is why the amazing team at United Power, supported by your Board of Directors, has unveiled the second version of Our Cooperative Roadmap (Roadmap). This document gives the co-op its direction and helps us screen activities in — as well as out.
The Roadmap v1.0 led us to where we are today. We have reduced our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than 26% since May 1 and successfully raised $700 million to evolve as an independent utility and meet the needs of our communities and more than 113,000 members. The Roadmap helped us obtain $261 million through the Empowering Rural America (New ERA) Program to support the transition to a cleaner energy supply and hyper-localize our resources. It clarified our technology investments, how we interact with members, and our role in supporting our communities.
Much has changed nearly three years after we unveiled the initial Roadmap. The western United States is edging closer to a power market and new power sources have come online. More members are adding solar panels and purchasing electric vehicles. But much has also remained the same, such as Colorado’s goal of 80% reduction in GHG emissions over 2005 levels by 2030 — a goal we will meet or exceed by helping members such as those in the oil and gas industry achieve their targets simply by electrifying the production facilities.
The Roadmap v2.0 maintains its focus on four critical areas that lie at the heart of what we do as a member-owned electric cooperative:
Empower and Engage with Members and Communities. This critical element ties directly to United Power’s Community Benefit Plan through New ERA. Our dedicated focus on supporting communities and members made creating the benefit plan a simple task for our team.
Provide Flexible, Affordable, Responsible Power and Services. United Power’s hyperlocalization strategy has resulted in significant deployment of battery energy storage systems, with more than 110 MWs spread across nine substations. It already proved valuable during last summer’s peak. This industry-leading deployment means we can benefit from times when power prices are low, using the stored energy when demand (and prices) are high.
Continuously Optimize the Electric Distribution System. As we move toward becoming a distribution system operator (DSO), focusing on local generation and control, our system investments are made with your future needs in mind. We installed a new outage management system in 2024 that, coupled with our advanced metering infrastructure, gives us better real-time operational data.
Achieve and Maintain Business Agility and Resilience. We will be replacing our distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) in 2025 to better manage system operations, and are rolling out a new asset management tool to improve our response times and better manage material and projects.
Underpinning Our Cooperative Roadmap are the amazing women and men of United Power and the foundational responsibilities they bring to running your cooperative every day.
Lewis Carroll’s words resonate for me when he said, “One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.” It sure sounds so to me.
As always, feel free to reach out to me with your questions, comments, and concerns.
Title
January Message from Mark A. Gabriel
/sites/default/files/styles/news_card_553x430_/public/news/CEO_Message.jpg?h=45932144&itok=pNegmSzP
Tuesday | January 2, 2024
Card Teaser
A message to United Power members from the cooperative's President & Chief Executive Officer.
Along with the honor of operating an electric cooperative on behalf of you, our members, comes the accountability of being prepared for the changing future in energy. Two recent, recurrent themes have emerged that emphasize the need for United Power to work diligently to make Our Cooperative Roadmap a reality.
The first is the need to continue investing in the grid, and the second is an ongoing concern that the need for capacity — the backbone of reliable power — is getting perilously close to a crisis. Both issues tend to focus on the problem. United Power is actively seeking solutions.
There has been a lot of talk recently about investing significant financial resources in the grid. The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law include funding to target large-scale projects over the next decade. These investments are needed and welcomed, but the completion estimates are measured in years or even decades. Meeting the needs of a growing enterprise like United Power is at least four to five years away, even with aggressive siting and execution.
People tend to think of the grid as the large power lines that deliver electricity from power plants miles away. Much of the energy transition challenge is that a lot of low or non-carbon generation is located far from population centers. Coupled with permitting challenges, supply chain constraints, and a confusing financing model, large-scale projects just take time.
But the grid also includes distribution systems, operated by utilities like United Power. It is the main conduit to our members and requires as much — or more — investment as its larger cousins. Your Board of Directors has continuously supported budgets to upgrade and expand critical infrastructure, and these investments have paid off. United Power has one of the best distribution networks in the country, evidenced by high reliability numbers, rapid outage response, and data-driven system management.
A robust distribution grid is also critical to the second issue — the potential for seasonal power shortages.
The North American Reliability Corporation (NERC), responsible for assessing and enforcing reliability standards, recently found the country is at an elevated risk of having insufficient energy supplies to meet demand in extreme conditions. The reasons for this potential shortfall range from coal and nuclear plant closures and an expanded reliance on natural gas to the increased electrification of everything.
“Extreme cold weather events can cause electricity demand to deviate significantly from historical forecasts. Electricity demand in winter is closely tied to outside temperature. As electric heat pumps and heating systems become more prevalent, their combined effect on system demand is even more pronounced,” NERC stated.
The industry has tried to slow the energy transition and continue operating money-losing coal plants instead of proposing solutions. And, importantly, there are solutions. This is where United Power’s strategy of hyper-localizing generation and storage comes into play.
As we prepare for our upcoming power supply transition, United Power is adding significant amounts of battery storage, spread across our system. We are locating natural gas peaking units tied in to the distribution — versus transmission — networks and contracting with power supplies closer to the communities we serve. This reduces line losses, improves reliability, and keeps tax dollars local. We will couple this with efficiency programs, support any members who want to generate part of their own power through solar, and expand demand response options now that we will have a realistic peak window.
Of course, we will continue to get power from generation plants and support efforts to build out the transmission grid as it will continue to have a role in a modern electric enterprise. But, we will focus on what we can do locally.
As always, please feel free to reach out with your questions, comments, or concerns. United Power welcomes the opportunity to meet with your community groups and discuss the cooperative’s response to the changing industry.
