"Rural electric cooperatives have a long and proud history in the United States. Beginning in the mid-1930s, they brought electricity to rural America, lighting up 56 percent of the nation's landmass and providing power to 90 percent of its poorest counties. They did it mostly with the cheapest energy source America had at the time: coal.
There are now more than 900 local co-ops, and they are supplied by 62 regional cooperatives that provide wholesale generation and transmission services. But they are facing a major transition because solar and wind power is now cheaper than coal in many parts of the United States. That has provoked disputes between the co-ops and their power suppliers, arising in situations that have been, at times, not so cooperative.
Perhaps the most glaring break came in 2016 when the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, which serves 37,000 customers in Taos, N.M., and parts of three adjoining counties, got so angry at its co-op supplier, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc. of Westminster, Colo., that it told Tri-State it wanted to cancel its 40-year contract to buy electricity."
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