CEO’s Message – March 2025

PNGC – Strength Through Numbers

The Pacific Northwest Generating Cooperative (PNGC), is an Oregon-based electric generation and transmission (G&T) cooperative owned by 25 Northwest electric distribution co-op utilities.

That is the boilerplate language straight from the PNGC website.

What PNGC actually represents for Columbia REA, 1 of the 25 owner-member cooperatives mentioned above, is an opportunity to really “get in the game” in terms of securing continued access to adequate energy resources while maintaining the lowest rates possible for you, the owner-members of Columbia REA.

What is the game? Let’s pretend for a moment that a megawatt of electricity is like an Easter egg, and our game is a highly competitive Easter egg hunt. The eggs we need are out there, but every utility is hunting for them, and the number of eggs out there is not increasing as fast as the demand for eggs.

And what happens when the demand for eggs goes up? Yep, the cost goes up. But, getting back to our friends at PNGC, we also know that if you need just a dozen eggs, and you have 10 friends who also need a dozen eggs, then you can go straight to the farmer, and get a better deal on 11 dozen eggs.

That is the opportunity provided by membership in PNGC: 25 electric utility co-ops banding together to create bargaining power in the energy market to get the best deals possible, wherever those deals are available.

Columbia REA will still get the majority of our electricity from BPA hydropower, but the amount of hydropower that BPA is allowed to generate is entirely allocated, which is driving the need to search for additional electricity elsewhere to meet increasing demand. That search is taking place in a very complex, ever-changing landscape.

As a member of PNGC, we have an entire team of professionals working on our behalf to seek out and secure secondary market power wherever it can be found. Columbia REA’s Dan Andrews is a recent addition to the PNGC Power Purchasing Group.

“These are people who live, eat, and breathe the energy marketplace. We are always looking for available resources,” says Dan.

“Whether it’s solar, wind, SMRs, gas, or coal, we’ll look into it. The decisions we’re making today are going to impact our members going forward for 20 years. My job is to make sure we get the power we need at the best possible rate to benefit the co-op.”

The 25 PNGC-member utilities represent over 430,000 accounts across 7 western states. That is roughly 100 times the number of accounts we handle at Columbia REA. And all those utilities are facing the same challenges we are, searching for the same energy solutions that we are, fighting for members the same way that we are. Being a member of PNGC can provide strength solidarity, and significant bargaining power that Columbia REA would not have on our own, and that strength will pay dividends for a long, long time, not to mention help keep our Easter egg hunt from turning into a more difficult game, such as “Find the Needle in the Haystack.”

Best,
Scott Peters