CEO, Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association
Jeff Wadsworth is President & CEO of Poudre Valley REA, an electric cooperative utility in Northern Colorado. He has worked with electric utilities for twenty years, including as a financial consultant with the international financial, tax and auditing firm KPMG.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: Jeff, tell me a little about your organization.
Jeff Wadsworth: It's in a great part of the country. We're located in northern Colorado, and we service approximately forty-two thousand meters. That number continues to tick upward. We service Larimer County, Weld County, and Boulder counties, in the northern Front Range.
We're growing at about three percent when it comes to the number of meters, and about six percent when it comes to load. We have oil and gas load coming on, and we also have more residential housing being built in our service territory.
We are also seeing a high amount of consumer rotation. Our consumers rotate about ten percent every year. We have a lot of in and outs. That causes a lot of challenges for us - we have to communicate what a co-op is, what a utility is, how we're different, and what we're doing in terms of renewable energy and innovation. Those are things that we're focused on.
PUF: Is that because you have students and other folks that are moving in and out of the area?