Tri-State and member co-op Continental Divide Electric Cooperative (Grants, N.M.) recently awarded $1,000 to the Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments (COG) to help weatherize 70 homes and businesses in the Village of Milan. The matching grant was made possible through Tri-State’s long-standing Energy Efficiency Credits program.
Continental Divide general manager Robert E. Castillo said that the co-op wants to embrace efforts to help its members achieve energy efficiency. “In this day and age, it’s imperative we all work together to come up with solutions that help the co-op, its power provider, and above all its members cut energy costs and usage,” Castillo said.
The COG and its project administrator approached the co-op in December about “Project ECO,” which will use federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money – “stimulus funds” – to weatherize 60 homes and 10 businesses in Milan, in the hopes of saving about 23,000 killowatt-hours of electricity and about 1,100 therms of natural gas savings annually – about a 5 percent reduction overall.