Fall River and Lower Valley coop directors consider merger

The directors of Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative and Lower Valley Energy have announced they are interested in merging.

Fall River is based in Ashton and Lower Valley is based in Afton, Wyo. Both coops serve a broad rural area in which many Idaho Falls and Upper Snake River Valley people have cabins and vacation homes, said Ted Austin, Fall River’s marketing and communications manager.

The next step in the process is for the two boards to define the terms of consolidation. Once that takes place, each cooperative would take the consolidation plan to its respective members for a vote of approval.

Fall River Electric serves more than 16,000 customers in eastern Idaho, western Wyoming and southwest Montana. Lower Valley Energy serves members from Flagg Ranch in Yellowstone National Park, down to Smoot past Afton, Wyo., over to Wayan in Idaho, and east to Kendall and Cora, Wyo. Austin said the two cooperatives have considered merging for decades, but changing energy policies and regional policies planned by the Bonneville Power Administration make the idea of consolidation more appealing than ever.  Two consolidation studies that have been done concluded that a consolidated operation could save members nearly $4 million dollars annually or an estimated $38 million over 10 years.

Consolidation would mean greater financial resources for dealing with changes in the electrical industry, an opportunity to expand natural gas and propane services to more members, plus greater workforce efficiencies. But both boards have said consolidation would not result in employee layoffs or reductions in pay for the existing staffs.

Much more work is needed on the plan before it is presented to the owner-members of each cooperative for a vote later this

year, Austin said. If approved, implementation of the entire consolidation plan could take two to three years.

GOBankingRates.com gives Idaho some good press -- again

Idaho has been getting some great press on the www.gobankingrates.com Web site.

Last June, the Gem State ranked third best in a listing of Best and Worst States to Retire Rich, behind only New Hampshire and Delaware. Here’s the writeup on Idaho from that feature:

Idaho’s extremely low living expenses catapulted it to third in our study, with one of the lowest cost-of-living scores in the nation — only Mississippi and Tennessee are cheaper. Retirees also have access to higher-than-average local deposit rates to grow their savings and low local tax rates; residents pay no Social Security, estate, or inheritance taxes and fairly low sales and property taxes.

Idaho was bumped out of the top two spots due to less-stellar health care scores: The state is middle of the line (24th place) when it comes to its seniors’ health, and its Medicare payouts are only average. Still, the state’s average individual insurance premiums are low — among the 10 cheapest in the nation.

In the wake of that news, today we have another piece: 10 States Most (and Least) Likely to Live Paycheck to Paycheck.

This time, Idaho ranked fifth, earning this endorsement:

Potatoes are cheap, and Idahoans' food costs are among the lowest in the nation at $172 per the median $2,055 paycheck (just 8 percent). Housing (22 percent), healthcare (5 percent) and utilities (7 percent) per-paycheck costs are all also modest, with transportation being one of Idahoans' biggest expenses (20 percent).

When all is said and done, living in Idaho is pretty easy on your budget. If you earn the median income, you can have a little more than 37 percent left over ($769) per paycheck.

GOBankingRates.com is part of the GoMediaNetwork, which is owned and operated by ConsumerTrack, Inc. Click here for its Facebook page and here for its Twitter feed.

Ted Austin named new Rexburg chamber CEO

Ted Austin

Ted Austin has been selected as the next CEO of the Rexburg Area Chamber of Commerce. Austin, a longtime resident of the area, will officially begin leading the chamber on Tuesday, replacing Donna Benfield, who has served as CEO of the Chamber for twenty years.

The official announcement was made Jan. 12 by Dr. Geoffrey Thomas, president of the chamber, at the monthly board meeting. “After reviewing and meeting with a deep and talented pool of applicants over the last several months, the executive board made a unanimous decision to hire Ted. He is clearly qualified and enthusiastic about leading the Chamber as it benefits our growing business community.”

Austin served as president of the chamber in 2011. He most recently has been the communications manager for Fall River Rural Electric Cooperative, based in Ashton, and also served as the marketing and advertising manager for its subsidiary Fall River Propane. He has held management positions at Melaleuca, ML Technologies, and Diet Center. He also has been extensively involved in local broadcasting, having owned and operated Q102-KCHQ FM radio in Rexburg, which he sold to Rich Broadcasting in 2011.

Austin and his wife, Connie, have six children and eight grandchildren.

“My first order of business will be to attempt to digest 20 years of experience and knowledge that Donna Benfield has gained,” he said, in a news release. “She has done an exceptional job on behalf of the members of the Chamber.”

INL, Idaho Falls Power collaborating on two-year $1 million project

The Gem State Hydroelectric facility is capable of generating 22.4 mega­watts of electricity for Idaho Falls, but that is subject to the run of the river, which will be part of what is studied in the collaboration between the city and INL.

Jackie Flowers

Idaho Falls Power and the Idaho National Laboratory are entering into a two-year, $1 million collaboration as a result of the Energy Department’s $220 million electrical power grid modernization initiative.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced the program Thursday. In all, INL is leading or acting as a partner in 15 projects that could bring more than $5 million to the lab over the next three years. One of those proposals involves improving the physical security of Idaho Falls’ municipally owned distribution system.

Idaho Falls Power Director Jackie Flowers said the idea of working with INL came after an outage in December 2013 left city residents without electricity for several hours in subzero cold. The morning of Dec. 4, she arrived at work to learn that the Balancing Authority  -- which controls the electric grid that
serves power providers in the area — had ordered the city to shed 35 megawatts in 30 minutes. This was to cope with an outage already going on in the wider territory served by Rocky Mountain Power.

“For 10 minutes, we stood there asking, ‘Are they serious?’” Flowers said. They were, and between 7:45 a.m. and 11:45 a.m., about 3,500 Idaho Falls Power customers were without juice. All this was judged necessary to keep the entire grid from crashing when Rocky Mountain Power attempted to restore service to nearly 49,000 Idaho customers left in the dark. Afterwards, city officials began talking about how they could make the grid more robust.

Idaho Falls Power had already been working with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on the Pacific Smart Grid Demonstration Project. After hearing a talk on grid modernization by David Danielson, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, they began to learn what was available through INL, which does a lot of battery research for DOE.

The proposal approved Thursday teams Idaho Falls Power and INL with Schweitzer Engineering Labs, Washington State University and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems to test smart reconfiguration. INL has a real time digital simulator that allows it to model how the city can spread load evenly during times of high demand. Battery research at the lab will allow the utility to explore ways to store energy from its hydroelectric and wind turbines.

“It’s so fun to coordinate with folks that have all these,” Flowers said.

Overall, a more secure grid is likely to save the city money. Outages caused by severe weather cost the U.S. economy an average of $18 billion to $33 billion a year, according to a White House report released in 2012. The hits come from lost output and wages, spoiled inventory, delayed production and damage to the electric grid. In 2012, when 8.5 million people lost power due to Superstorm Sandy, those costs rose as high as $52 billion.

The report argued for the need to update the nation's electric grid: high-voltage transmission lines connected to power plants, local distribution systems, and power management and control systems. Seventy percent of the nation’s transmission lines and power transformers are more than 25 years old.

“Modernizing the U.S. electrical grid is essential to reducing carbon emissions, creating safeguards against attacks on our infrastructure, and keeping the lights on,” Moniz said Thursday. The Grid Modernization Initiative represents a comprehensive DOE effort to help shape the future of the United States' grid. It seeks to solve the challenges of integrating conventional and renewable sources with energy storage and smart buildings while ensuring that the grid is resilient and secure in the face of growing cyber security and climate challenges.

Dave's Bike Shop eyes Jan. 25 opening in new location

Dave Wilding of Dave's Bike Shop in his new location on Broadway.

Dave Wilding, owner of Dave’s Bike Shop in downtown Idaho Falls, is hoping to be open in his new location on Broadway, in the old Catmull’s store.

“There’s nothing really crazy we have to do, just framing and painting, just to make it ours,” he said. When they removed the old carpet they found hardwood floors underneath. Those will be sanded and sealed, because they still have marks from when the space was the Western Auto garage.

When it’s all said and done, they will have 8,000 square feet, a vast expansion over the space they’ve been in, next door to Chesbro’s. “The service area will be four times as big, and we will have a studio for bike fittings,” he said. “We want to keep the vibe of the old store, but just have a little more room to move.”

Wilding opened his store in late summer 2011 and has carved out a nice niche. “The community has been very supportive, easy to deal with and trusting,” he said. He started talking with Dale Catmull over year ago, as soon as he learned the furniture store would be closing.

Dave’s has been renting giant-tire bikes for people who like to ride in the winter. With spring and summer coming, they plan to start renting cruiser bikes for people who want to ride on the nearby Greenbelt.

“We like being downtown,” Wilding said. “I think there’s a certain feel. You’ve got more people out walking, and more cyclists. It’s fun to have the small restaurants nearby.”