A not-for-profit wholesale power supplier owned by electric cooperatives, generating and transmitting electricity for rural members across four western US states.
Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc. is a not-for-profit wholesale power supplier founded in 1952 and owned by its member electric cooperatives and public power districts. Its purpose is to deliver electricity to rural areas of the American West that investor-owned utilities do not serve. The association operates across Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming, covering a service territory of nearly 200,000 square miles and supplying more than one million consumers.
Its business rests on two pillars: generation and transmission. The generation portfolio combines natural gas plants with wind and solar resources, a mix that Tri-State is adjusting as it takes part in the transition towards cleaner energy. Power is moved over a high-voltage network of nearly 6,000 miles of transmission infrastructure, linking its plants to the members that distribute electricity locally.
The organisation is structured on a cooperative basis: it is owned by the utilities it serves, and it exists to solve common problems on their behalf rather than to generate profit. That structure, in place for more than seven decades, shapes both its operating remit and the mission set out by its founding cooperatives - to provide reliable, affordable and responsible power to rural communities.
