Wyoming
Rural Wyoming Co-ops To Get More Green Power From Colorado-Based…
The parent group of several rural electricity cooperatives operating in Wyoming has reached a major milestone in a complex energy transition plan that it hopes will hold the line on wholesale power rates with a boost coming from a growing supply of green power.
Colorado-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, a supplier of electricity to cooperatives across the Western United States that was founded more than 75 years ago, has launched a new power buying program to help keep the lid on rates. That’s after its largest member in Colorado paid $627 million to leave Tri-State with the hope of finding cheaper power supply deals elsewhere.
Following the move, a major credit rating agency upgraded the association’s billions of dollars in debt July 31, a move that will improve the organization’s future borrowing costs needed to implement a future green power spending plan.
Tri-State is focused on buying electricity wholesale from suppliers for either their own use, or because they are a supplier to retail or industrial consumers.
Tri-State is optimistic that its new power buying program that relies on green power delivered over hundreds of miles of high-voltage transmission lines in Wyoming and other adjoining states will keep wholesale rates in check.
The new power buying opportunity for rural Wyoming electricity cooperatives is the result of a federal regulatory agency decision made earlier this month.
The agency, called the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC) regulates high-voltage power lines in the United States, including transmission delivery rates.
This month, FERC approved a plan submitted by Tri-State, the parent of Wyoming’s electric cooperatives, that effectively gives them the flexibility to draw up to 40% of their power needs through a new program designed to move green power over the high-voltage grid, called Bring Your Own Resource (BYOR).
There are eight rural electric cooperatives in Wyoming that are members of Tri-State.
More Renewable Power
The BYOR program is the result of significant guidance and input from Tri-State’s member electric cooperatives and public power districts, which now have increased flexibility to own or contract for their own energy projects.
The electricity is expected to come largely from renewable energy projects, like wind turbines or solar panels.
Tri-State is a nonprofit cooperative with 44 members, including 41 electric distribution cooperatives and public power districts in four states that provide electricity to more than 1 million consumers across nearly 200,000 square miles in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming.
In Wyoming, Tri-State’s distribution cooperatives include Big Horn Rural Electric Co. in Basin; Carbon Power & Light Inc. in Saratoga; Garland Light & Power Co. in Powell; High Plains Power Inc. in Riverton; High West Energy Inc. in Pine Bluffs; Niobrara Electric Association Inc. in Lusk; Wheatland Rural Electric Association in Wheatland; and Wyrulec Co. in Torrington.
The general managers of seven of the cooperatives in Wyoming were not immediately available to comment on the benefits of the new green-energy buying opportunity.
Jeff Umphlett, the general manager of Big Horn Rural Electric, declined to comment on the BYOB program until “issues are settled.”
Improved Credit
The BYOB comes on the heels of a major credit rating upgrade by S&P Global Ratings, a New York City-based credit rating agency that has influence over the interest rates companies like Tri-State pay to borrow money.
S&P revised its outlook to stable from negative on a few billions of dollars in debt held by Tri-State.
The outlook revision reflects the withdrawal of United Power Inc., Tri-State’s largest member, from the association on May 1.
The exit was seen as removing an impediment to Tri-State’s energy transition plan.
According to S&P, Tri-State received a $627 million contract termination payment from Brighton, Colorado-based United Power, that was used to pay down debt.
“We view the contract termination payments established by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as a potential disincentive for additional member distribution cooperatives to sever their ties with Tri-State,” said S&P credit analyst David Bodek in a July 31 statement.
Tri-State management has stated that it will apply the proceeds of the exit fee to offset portions of its $2.6 billion, five-year capital improvement plan and to reduce its $3.4 billion in existing debt by about 13%, according to Bodek.
Tri-State spokesman Lee Boughey said that the Bring Your Own Resource plan gives member cooperatives in its network the leeway to draw power resources from local power plants.
The member organizations had been restricted to 5% supplies locally, but now can bring in up to 40%, Boughey said.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be all green power, but they can self supply their own power.”
Tri-State is clearly taking steps to exit coal-fired power plants over the next few years.
The 1,427-megawatt Craig Station in northwestern Colorado should be fully retired by the beginning of 2028, Boughey said.
Tri-State owns Craig’s Unit 3, and operates Units 1 and 2 with other utility interests involved. The latter two units will be retired in 2025 and 2028, respectively.
Other Tri-State-owned coal-fired plants have been retired in recent years, including the 100-megawatt Nucla Station in 2019 and Escalante Station in northern New Mexico the following year. It plans to close
Tri-State said that there are no plans to retire the 1,710-megawatt coal-fired Laramie River Station in Wheatland, Wyoming, but will close Arizona’s Springerville Station 458-MW Unit 3 in 2031.
The Springerville power plant is a 1,765-megawatt, four-unit generating facility in eastern Arizona near the New Mexico border.
“Our resource plans remain on track and by the end of next year, 50% of the energy our members use will come from clean energy, rising to 70% in 2030, with significant greenhouse gas reductions,” said Tri-State CEO Duane Highley, in a statement in May after United exited from his association.
“Our resource planning establishes a high standard for reliability, even in extreme weather events, and our wholesale rates will remain competitive for our members,” Highley said.
Good Luck
“We wish United Power and its consumer-members well as they go off on their own,” he said.
United Power President and CEO Mark Gabriel was not immediately available for comment.
United Power, which is now Colorado’s third largest utility, served notice to Tri-State in 2022 that it was leaving the cooperative because of Tri-State’s failure to control power costs and invest in more “local generation.”
Tri-State’s 5,800-mile transmission network relies on more than 30 power generation resources and in 2031, members will share more than 50 resources, including more than 2,200-megawatts of wind and solar resources.
Looking ahead, Tri-State is rapidly looking to rely more on alternative sources of power production.
In 2024 and 2025, Tri-State will add 595 megawatts of new solar, according to a Tri-State statement.
This additional power generation will help with iTri-State’s electric resource plan filed with regulators. That plan calls for Tri-State to meet an 89% greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal in Colorado in 2030, the retirement of four coal-fired generation units between 2025 and 2031, and the addition of 1,250-megawatts of additional renewable energy resources and energy storage between 2026 and 2031.
Tri-State managed to hold its rates stable for seven years through 2023 before increasing them about 6.3% for 2024 to $77.91 a delivered megawatt-hour of electricity.
United’s Gabriel has previously stated that he could buy power on the open market at a $60 to $65 price.
The main complaints that co-ops have voiced about Tri-State are that the association’s rates are high, its 50-year contracts are too long and require the
cooperatives to buy 95% of their electricity from the association, thwarting efforts to develop local projects.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
Wyoming
Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat
Wyoming
Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 2 Scores 2025-26
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CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026
4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
Wyoming
Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers
Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.
The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.
“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”
Questions around the checks were soon swirling, and answers weren’t forthcoming. When asked what Bextel gave to her, Brady told a reporter for local outlet WyoFile: “I can’t remember.”
Then Bextel herself addressed the incident. “I raised $400,000 in the last election cycle for conservative candidates, and I will be doubling that amount this year,” Bextel wrote on Facebook on 11 February. “There’s nothing wrong with delivering lawful campaign checks from Teton county donors when I am in Cheyenne.”
Since then, it has emerged that the checks came from Don Grasso, a wealthy Teton county donor, who told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that he wrote the checks for Bextel to deliver to 10 Freedom caucus-aligned politicians. Grasso said the checks were intended as campaign contributions, and were not tied to specific legislation. It is unclear how many checks were ultimately delivered, but two of four confirmed recipients include the speaker of the house, Chip Neiman, and John Bear, the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
The Wyoming house has formed a legislative investigative committee, and the Laramie county sheriff’s office said they’d open a criminal investigation.
Bextel declined to answer questions from the Guardian. Brady, McCann and Bear did not respond to requests for comment.
Neiman said he considered the criticism a “wraparound smear campaign”. He said: “It never once crossed my mind that this was bribery.
“These legislators, myself included, are now guilty until we can prove that we’re innocent. How is that right in this country? Isn’t that a little bit backwards?”
The scandal has highlighted long-standing divisions in Wyoming’s Republican party, which in recent years has seen a growing divide between old school, more moderate conservatives and a harder-right Freedom Caucus.
Several former Republican lawmakers forcefully condemned their colleagues for accepting the checks, and a local Republican party branch called for the lawmakers’ resignations.
Ogden Driskill, a Wyoming Republican senator, told the Guardian he does not consider Bextel’s actions to be illegal, but that “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should”.
Bextel has spent years pushing against housing mitigation fees in Wyoming, and Driskill noted that she distributed the house floor checks just days before a bill she had publicly supported was set to be heard. Bextel was registered as a member of the press, not as a lobbyist when she delivered the checks.
“Ethically and morally, it’s bankrupt to a massive degree,” Driskill said.
Neiman said that he and other legislators who received checks have supported similar bills in the past: “Bribery is paying somebody to do something they would not otherwise do.”
Nationally, the 2024 election cycle saw record-spending from the mega-wealthy, as well as dark money groups. Wyoming followed the trend, in a tense red-on-red primary season.
For those gearing up to campaign this year, Teton county, the richest in the US, and Bextel’s picturesque home turf, is an essential stop. Its extreme wealth gives it a foothold on the national level as well. Palantir chief executive Alex Karp and Donald Trump attended an annual Republican leadership fundraiser at Jackson Hole in 2024, and JD Vance attended the same one in 2025.
Bextel pulls dollars from Teton county into the Freedom Caucus side of Wyoming’s conservative split. She hosted no-press-allowed meet and greets earlier this year benefitting leading candidates for Wyoming’s governor and open US House seat.
In an interview with the Open Range Record, a media network she co-founded, Bextel said controversy around the checks was solely because she was making “even playing field” in Wyoming against the state’s more moderate Republicans, who she calls “George Soros” candidates. She said that she will be sure to keep raising money – just away from the legislative floor.
“I guess I’m gonna ask all the gentlemen and gentleladies to step outside the Capitol while I hand them a check,” Bextel said. “Let me be clear: I’m doubling down.”
But it’s not just wealthy local donors putting their weight behind the factions. Last election cycle, out of state groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anonymous and often inaccurate mailers.
“These actors, especially from the far right, they like to push the bounds of the norms,” said Rosa Reyna Pugh, an organizing and advocacy consultant at Western States Center, an Oregon-based non-profit focused on democracy in the western United States. “They like to see what policies they can kind of push, and see where they can play a piece,” Reyna Pugh said.
While Neiman and Driskill fight politically, they do agree on one thing: summer will bring an expensive and brutal campaign season.
“You’re going to see more dark money than you’ve ever seen. We’ve done absolutely nothing to enforce it. Our secretary of state has not even made a slight attempt to deal with it,” Driskill said. “You’re going to see lots and lots of outside money and I think you’re seeing it on both sides.”
As national questions swirl around pay-to-play politics and profiteering in the Trump administration, Provenza wants better for the Cowboy State.
“We should not be aligning ourselves with how the federal government is conducting itself or how federal elections conduct themselves,” Provenza said. “We owe something far better and more honest to the people of Wyoming than that.”
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