GUERNSEY – During last week’s Guernsey Council Meeting, councilman Joe Michaels briefed the rest of the council on the WMPA (Wyoming Municipal Power Agency) summer meeting he attended recently. A presentation by Basin Electric was a large part of the meeting, Michaels said.
For background, the “footprint” of Basin Electric Power Cooperative is from the Canada to Mexico borders, and from the eastern grid to the west coast. The cooperative has kept its coal powered electrical generation plants in its portfolio, and simply added some “green energy” sources to it. Tri-State Energy and Transmission Association, Inc. and Rocky Mountain Power are both for-profit electric utility agencies which are phasing out coal-fired plants. All companies have agreements among each other and other electric cooperatives to work together to provide smooth transmission of electricity to consumers.
“Tri-State Energy didn’t like the way Basin was doing their [energy portfolio]…Tri-State felt they were doing their accounting wrong, so they’re in court. Then Sierra Club decided to sue – [one of their goals is] they want all coal power plants gone,” Michaels said.
“Basin said they don’t know where the power is going to coming from – we’re (coal-fired plants) keeping them up,” Michaels said. He explained, last year in North Dakota during a high-pressure cold snap of 25-degrees below zero, “green energy” 1500-megawatt wind turbine production dropped to less than 50 megawatts. “Which is 90 percent less than it’s supposed to. So, if not for coal powered plants, would have been hard to keep things warm and the lights on,” he said.

He shared with the council his bleak outlook for the states in the eastern grid, such as in Michigan and Wisconsin, who are shutting all coal and nuclear plants down to go to strictly “green” energy.
Back in our corner of Wyoming, Michaels reported Basin is making sure its transmission lines are “up to snuff and maintained in good condition.”
On the downside, Basin will be increasing its rates “someplace between five and six mills, so one-half cent per kilowatt hour, which equates to a $2.50 raise at wholesale price 400-kwh residential usage.”
Michaels said WMPA is going to do a pass-through rate hike but is working to have money set aside from participating municipalities so rates stay “reasonable.”
He shared an example, drawn from an electric outage that was compounded by a totally-green-energy base of electricity, which, in 2021, froze wind-generated electric turbines and froze natural gas wellheads in Texas after utility companies removed all coal-based facilities from contributing to their portfolios. “When you shut down all your power plants and the demand is still there, you have to buy it on the open market,” Michaels pointed out.
The problem is, there is still a supply-demand cost structure, so what typically costs $35 to $50 per megawatt on the wholesale market, suddenly cost up to $100. “Some of this was going 5, 6, or 7 thousand dollars per megawatt. That’s why Rocky mountain Power [requested through the Wyoming Utilities Commission] to raise rates 30 percent. They got 2-ish, but they said they are going to raise their rates to that level again,” Michaels said.
In conclusion, Michaels said, “Basin Electric is doing an incredible job. They’re keeping [energy] reliable and affordable.”
WMPA has been keeping up with pole and line testing on its transmission lines, including an old line that used to feed into Wheatland. “We still keep that up because it’s a good backup in that direction…The good news is, the increase [in rates] isn’t going to be much. The bad news is, yeah, there’s going to be an increase,” he said.