Basin Electric’s benchmarking team visits two Midwest co-ops

In April, Basin Electric’s benchmarking team visited East Kentucky Power Cooperative in Winchester Kentucky, and Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. in Springfield, Missouri, to share best practices and learn from industry partners.

“The energy industry is changing and we're trying to adapt in that landscape,” said Jason Cowan, director of Generation Excellence at Basin Electric. He said the cooperatives shared a lot of information that may help each become better as they move forward in the changing energy landscape.

Several topics were discussed among the co-ops, including organizational charting, generation fleets, outage processes, and environmental topics.

“One of the things we discovered is none of our plants are the same. There's a lot of differences in the facilities that we looked at and how they operate versus how Basin Electric operates,” Cowan said. “Some of them had scrubbers, some didn't. They use different technologies. Even their gas fleets are different. Some of them are heavily reliant on combined cycle and different manufacturers of gas turbines compared to what Basin Electric has.”

Sharing information among co-ops is something that will continue.

“We’re trying to engage our industry peers,” he said. “If they are willing to share, sit down and have a discussion, it’s more information that helps us either to know what we’re doing is within the confines of what everybody else is doing, or we learn there are areas where we are doing better, or there are areas for opportunity.”

The visits provided the team with a good opportunity to share processes and learn from each other. “Basin Electric is about continuous improvement and moving things forward, and we're going to continue on that path,” Cowan said. “This goes along with our Cooperative Principles: ‘By working together through local, national, regional and international structures, cooperatives improve services, bolster local economies, and deal more effectively with social and community needs.’”