GCEA to Begin Work Summer 2025 on Multi-Phase Infrastructure Improvement Project

_{by Gianna Morera}

Last April, Gunnison County Electric Association (GCEA) was awarded a $5-million grant under a federal initiative to deploy clean energy in rural and remote America. Work on the multi-phase infrastructure improvement project, which will ultimately result in a more flexible and resilient electric grid for Hinsdale County residents, is planned to begin this summer.
The stretch of distribution line running between Gunnison and Lake City is one of the oldest in GCEA’s service area, according to GCEA Strategy Execution, Technology, & Member Experience Manager Matt Feier.
By the end of 2026, 138 existing poles dating from the late 1950s will be retired and replaced. An additional 83 poles will be installed to support a new heavier, thicker distribution line with greater capacity. The upgraded line will take Lake City from one source of energy to two, making the community less vulnerable to prolonged outages.
“The Lake City substation gets a transmission line
Vol. 48, No. 12 Friday, June 20, 2025 Lake City, Hinsdale County, Colorado 81235 U.S.P.S. No. 436-630
75¢feed from Tri-State Energy. If that were to go down, we could feed the whole community on this new line,” explains Feier.
Electrical substations convert high-voltage electricity from power plants to levels that can be delivered to customers. The existing distribution line is undersized to provide power to all of the homes and businesses in Lake City, but the new line will enable GCEA to feed in enough backup power from Gunnison to get the town back up and running should the primary feed or local substation fail.
“That redundancy creates quite a bit of resiliency for the community. Had we had this upgrade already done, the people that experienced a 28-hour outage [after a substation failure in February 2023] would’ve experienced more like a one hour outage.”
Critical to securing the grant was the other important benefit of this work – the ability to take advantage of alternative energy sources. An Jonesupgraded line would be able to tie in to renewable power projects, such as hydroelectric or solar, which cannot be done with the infrastructure in place today.
One such source could be the disused hydroelectric dam at the location known locally as Crooke Falls, suggests Feier. “We will be in a better position to take advantage of options like that because we’ll have a line with available capacity that can accept inputs of energy,” he says.
GCEA has contracted with Englewood-based Ward Construction to complete the field work. During the first phase of the project, scheduled to begin July 2025, Ward will replace poles and upgrade transmission lines between the Iola boat ramp at Blue Mesa Reservoir and Powderhorn. In Summer 2026, work will continue on the lines from Iola back to the Skito substation outside of Gunnison and another 3-mile stretch south of Powderhorn, for a total of 33 miles.
The $5-million in grant money will cover about half of the cost for these first two phases, and GCEA will fund the rest via amortized rate increases for their members.
Funding for the last roughly 20-mile stretch between Powderhorn and Lake City has not yet been secured, leaving the timeline for completion undefined.