Yampa Valley Electric Association CEO Scott Blecke told an audience of members and employees during the annual meeting of the co-op on Tuesday that YVEA is still waiting in limbo to see if a previously announced $50 million federal renewable energy grant will come through.

In October, the nonprofit, member-owned electric cooperative learned it was one of six rural electric cooperatives approved for significant renewable energy grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s New ERA, or Empowering Rural America program. The funding is designated to invest in renewable energy to reduce pollution in rural parts of the U.S. and was part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Yet, eight months later, the status of the $50 million grant to YVEA is still unclear.

“It hasn’t been canceled, like some others, but it hasn’t been given the go-ahead either,” Blecke told the audience at YVEA headquarters in Steamboat Springs. “We are better than some but not as good as we could be yet.”

The New ERA investment is meant to help YVEA reduce the costs associated with procuring a power-purchase agreement for an upcoming renewable energy project, according to YVEA Public Relations Specialist Carly Davidson. The project would integrate up to 150 megawatts of solar energy and 75 megawatts of battery energy storage.

Blecke, the new CEO who started at YVEA in August, presented a report with both positives and challenges facing the co-op, which has some 23,000 member-customers and an approximately 7,000-square-mile service territory including Routt and Moffat counties.

On the positive side, Blecke said the co-op’s emphasis on safety was recognized with a 2024 Northwest Public Power Association first-place safety award. The co-op also recorded no Occupational Safety and Health Administration recordable events and no workers’ compensation claims during 2024.

Blecke said the reliability rate of the YVEA service was good at 99.94% during 2024, although a few members in the audience asked about outages during the question-and-answer time. Blecke said the top reasons for electric outages are snow, sleet and frost, followed by trees, birds, animals and lightning.

Blecke, a professional engineer from Michigan, noted that old and aging infrastructure also contributed to power outages. He said 45-50% of the YVEA infrastructure is more than 40 years old.

“It’s not unique to YVEA here. As you look across the industry, there is a significant amount of infrastructure that’s old,” Blecke said. “We don’t necessarily want to run it all the way to failure, but we’d like to go as long as we can … Part of the way to keep the rates low is by extending the life of those assets.”

Blecke added that YVEA is in “very strong financial position and really in a good spot to make strategic investments as we look to modernize the grid moving forward.”

Longtime YVEA Board Chairman Tom Fox noted during his report that during the last 10 to 15 years, “we have seen that the electrical world is changing and must adapt.” Fox said the search for the new CEO last year focused on selecting someone “who would meet those challenges in an ever-changing landscape with a strategic mind, and he (Blecke) did that.”

“We feel fortunate to have Scott Blecke on board, who is committed to innovation and service and is already making a very positive impact as we implement our long-term strategic goals,” Fox said. “While some of the details are still being worked out, we are proud of our progress in strategic planning and the positive impact it will have on the co-op.”

During the annual meeting, incoming board member Chad Garrett for District 7 covering Steamboat Springs was introduced, and outgoing District 7 board member Dan LeBlanc addressed the audience after his three-year term. LeBlanc and his family are moving outside of city limits so he is not eligible to serve in that seat again.

LeBlanc, who pointed out the electric co-op is “84 years young,” was one of multiple speakers to thank co-op employees.

“They are often underappreciated and unsung heroes, a lot of them,” LeBlanc said.

Customer-members in the audience asked questions about power costs as a percentage of electrical sales, cost of YVEA service compared to other Colorado cooperatives, whether the co-op would be moving toward a variable rate schedule for different times of the day and if the closure of the coal-fired power plants in the Yampa Valley might be a challenge for the co-op service.

A video of the annual meeting is posted online at yvea.com/about-us/annual-meeting.