CEO, High West Energy
Brian Heithoff is the CEO/General Manager for High West Energy, a locally-owned and operated electric utility cooperative headquartered in Pine Bluffs, WY and serving members in WY, NE and CO. Brian has held executive and financial management roles in four electric cooperatives since 1990.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: Brian, tell me about your company.
Brian Heithoff: I live in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, which is where High West Energy is headquartered. We have four service locations, including the headquarters. They are all right along I-80 in western Nebraska or southeast Wyoming.
We also serve the northern tier of Weld County and Logan County in Colorado. Our distribution territory includes three states, and we're pretty evenly split, as far as energy sales are concerned, between the three.
From a membership or meter standpoint, most of our meters are in Wyoming, though. Like many electric cooperatives, our roots are in agriculture, which in our case includes crop irrigation. Additionally, in the '60s our service territory grew because of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Program, with the ICBMs positioned here.
PUF: What do people do for a living in your area?