GCEA preps for coming solar array

The Baxter Gulch trailhead is right next to the Gunnison County Public Works shop, about a mile south of Crested Butte.

Gunnison County’s nonprofit electricity utility, the Gunnison County Electric Association, is laying the groundwork for another renewable energy project just miles outside the Crested Butte. The 1,125-kilowatt solar array will be built and owned by Outshine Energy, a Denver-based solar company. Most of the power generated from the array has already been sold off to local entities via renewable energy credits, or RECs.

Although GCEA won’t own the array, it entered a 30-year power purchase agreement with Gunnison Valley Solar LLC, an Outshine subsidiary, agreeing to buy power from the company at 6.8 cents per kilowatt hour. That price is about 2.8 cents more than the utility pays for power from its provider, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. In order to avoid passing costs along to consumers, GCEA sold the RECs to valley entities interested in greening their portfolios. 

Matt Feier, GCEA strategy execution specialist, declined to name all the entities, but confirmed that the Town of Crested Butte has signed onto recs for 45% of the array’s production, alongside Mt. Crested Butte and the Crested Butte South Property Owners Association. 

“We've gotten either verbal or written agreements to purchase those RECs for 100% of that energy production,” he said. 

Feier said it’s been a long-term goal for the utility to find a spot for a solar array. In 2021, GCEA brought in a contractor to evaluate the service area for the right spot. That contractor identified over a dozen possible sites for the array, which ended up being a “difficult task” due to topographical factors — too rocky, too steep or too shaded — and Gunnison sage-grouse habitat that excluded a number of possible sites. 

The base of Baxter Gulch emerged as the best solution, also because the Crested Butte owned the land and it’s right next to one of the utility’s existing substations. 

The town championed the project, Feier said, as council has already signed onto 100% renewable electricity by 2030. Crested Butte Long-Range Planner Mel Yemma confirmed to the Times that Outshine signed a 30-year lease with Gunnison Valley Solar LLC on May 11 of this year. The contract has potential for two five-year extensions and the company will pay the town $10 per year to lease the land, a move that made the site even more appealing, considering the inflating cost of land in the North Valley. 

The Taylor Park Dam, another GCEA renewable project, is coming online around the same time as the array and is meant to produce 3.8 million kilowatt-hours on average every year. GCEA’s contract with Tri-State caps the utility’s ability to self-generate power at 5%, meaning for the next 27 years of the contract term, the utility is limited in how much of its own power it can produce locally. The dam will produce about 3% of the utility’s annual production and the array will pull in 1.9%, so with the few small solar and wind projects GCEA already has, the utility will soon be capped out.

However, a clause in the contract with Tri-State tacks on another 2% for a community solar garden. GCEA already has two community solar gardens at the Crested Butte Wastewater Treatment Plant and at the utility’s headquarters off Hwy. 50, but the utility is continuing to look at other potential sites, said GCEA Chief Executive Officer Mike McBride. 

While GCEA is capped at 7%, its provider is also making renewable shifts — a move that may help the utility to continue a move into renewables even while local generation is restricted. The provider is soliciting 2,000 megawatts of renewable projects, and is currently reviewing those proposals with the intent to contract them out, McBride said, with a finish date between 2025 and 2030. 

The utility will have to work with the county to connect the new array into the existing system, including a permit for a land use revision. Outshine is “fine tuning” plans it submitted to the utility, with the intent to apply for a permit with the county in the coming months. 

(Abby Harrison can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or abby@gunnisontimes.com.)