Power to the People! TRICO on Stage
VIA SBINSIDER REPORTING | November 11th, 2024
One of the many financial benefits of living in SaddleBrooke is that our electric power is delivered by a CO-OP. Created in the 1930’s to electrify rural areas, the REA helped locals build their own power grids and TRICO is our cooperative. There are about 900 CO-OP’s in the United States operating today. The structure means that we are members\owners of the company and it is a not for profit. The board answers only to the members-no shareholders.
District 7 covers our areas and our board representative is Kevin McCarthy, who is easily accessible for alerts on outages and other matters related to TRICO operations. TRICO has 49K members in its service area, about 150 employees. TRICO delivers about 300 megawatts 24\7 to its members. TRICO has asked for a 7% rate increase targeted for 2026 due to the cost of new equipment and the Biden regulations on clean energy. The misnamed Inflation Reduction Act did provide grants (free taxpayer money) to CO-OP’s and Trico is aggressively pursuing those
If you have a power outage you can text to this number 855-937-1858 with the word OUT.
Growth is Continuing
While many areas of the USA have had no growth in demand, this area has seen many new residential and commercial buildings added and therefore TRICO is planning for more sourcing of energy. One source is the solar farm located West of Oracle Road that resident can see as they crest SaddleBrooke Drive. Most of of the other energy is purchased from other providers and not produced by the COOP.
The panel from TRICO took questions from the audience. One was about the rebate he gets from his solar panels pushing energy back into the grid. He asked if he could direct the money directly to a deserving organizations, instead of writing a check. Another question was about the use of wooden power poles for delivery. The answer was that currently we have 25K wooden poles and the cost is significant. However most of the heavier load poles are gradually being replaced by steel. Also a questioned was asked about substation security from attacks. TRICO is adding cameras and more importantly, a network of fiber cables to connect all the generating equipment to create a super high speed network to support reliability.
A question was asked about 4th generation thorium-cooled small footprint nuclear plants. Nuclear is an ideal source for Net-Zero power and highly reliable. TRICO says the rollout is likely still years away but they are watching the development. The Department of Defense and other Federal agencies are investing millions in this power source along with a consortium of other countries. As of 2021, active members include: Australia, Canada, China, the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), France, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Non-active members include Argentina and Brazil.
The panel stayed until all questions were answered remained after to speak one to one to anyone.
