Southern Montana Electric Generation and Transmission Cooperative Purchases Additional Power from PPL Montana to Help Supply the City of Great Falls

Southern Montana Electric Generation and Transmission Cooperative and its customers – including the City of Great Falls – will have the benefit of greater stability in their electricity prices because of an electricity supply contract with PPL Montana.

PPL Montana, which generates electricity and sells it to wholesale purchasers, will provide up to 10 additional megawatts under a contract signed with Southern Montana Electric Generation and Transmission Cooperative. The cooperative resells power to its customers.

“Southern Montana has been pleased with the quality supply services it receives from PPL Montana,” said Tim Gregori, general manager of Southern Montana. “We look forward to expanding this relationship in the future with specific purchases of Montana energy resources to meet the wholesale energy and related services needs of our member/owners.”

Under the contract, Southern will purchase up to six megawatts of power from PPL between September 2005 and June 2006 and up to 10 megawatts from July 2006 through September 2011.

“This agreement is for long-term electricity supply at a stable, predictable price,” said Brad Spencer, vice president and chief operating officer of PPL Montana. “The result is reduced exposure to the uncertainty of future energy prices for Southern Montana, and ultimately its customers.”

The cooperative currently purchases five megawatts of electricity from PPL through a contract that began Oct. 1, 2004, and runs through Dec. 31, 2008.

“Our goal is to sell as much of the energy we generate in Montana to customers here in the state, and this is yet another power sales contract that will help us do that,” Spencer said.

PPL Montana operates 11 hydroelectric power plants along the Missouri, Madison, Clark Fork and Flathead rivers and Rosebud Creek, as well as two coal-fired plants at Colstrip and Billings, that give it a combined generating capacity of about 1,200 megawatts. The company employs about 500 people at its facilities throughout the state with offices in Billings, Butte and Helena.