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~ ENERGY&POWER <br />Central Minnesota Municipal <br />Powe r Age n cy <br />Preparing for Tomorrow's <br />Needs Today <br />~'~o~Elice~i by ~?9~ert f~14ic~~~a~ ~: W~it[en by Camila C~sorno <br />Pazmerships aze at the core of Central Minnesota Municipal <br />Power Agenry (CMMPA), and the 13-person staff works hard <br />to collectively prepaze for [he current and future electricity needs <br />of its municipal utility members. The agenty supplies wholesale <br />power to 12 small south-central Minnesota municipal electric <br />utilities. "Our primary focus is on power-supply planning and <br />transmission planning for our members. In addition, we also <br />provide energy scheduling services for our members' resource <br />portfolios in [he MISO Energy Mazke[, including making the <br />necessary azrangements for transmission delivery. We provide <br />our members the benefits of being an aggregated purchaser by <br />providing them access to more power-supply alternatives than <br />would be available to them as a smaller independent purchaser," <br />explains Steve Thompson, CEO of CMMPA. <br />Energy <br />"A small municipal that has only atwo-MW load will have a <br />difficult time finding a competitive supplier that will contract <br />for such a small quantity of power and the final costs for such <br />a small transaction can be significantly higher. Aggregating <br />loads of multiple municipals allows us to buy lazger quan[icies <br />of power and at lower costs," Thompson continues. Since <br />its inception in 1987, CMMPA has represented the energy <br />interests of municipal utility members with the ability to secure <br />competitive rates collectively while retaining [he Hexibility to <br />supply a portion, or all, of its members' needs. More recently, <br />CMMPA has expanded its list of member services [o assisting <br />its members with transmission tariff recovery from MISO for <br />member-owned transmission asses. <br />64 ~ USBusinessExecutive WINTER ZO1Z <br />