In a recent interview with APPA, Travis Hunter, chief generation and transmission officer for the Platte River Power Authority, provided details on Platte River Power Authority substation and generation projects, as well as discussed his role and responsibilities as chief generation and transmission officer.
Platte River Power Authority generates and delivers energy and services to Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland, Colorado, for delivery to their utility customers.
Hunter recently spoke with APPA in an interview for APPA’s Public Power Now podcast.
Hunter in late 2024 was appointed to the new position of chief generation and transmission officer by the Platte River Power Authority following an internal restructuring process at the Colorado-based joint action agency.
“Coming into this new role, I'm really comfortable with my knowledge and background with the generation side of the job. With the new role, I'll also be taking over the transmission and our fiber assets as well, so that's going to be a whole new learning curve as I move through in this role,” he said.
“The past experiences... I’ve been able to see the bigger picture of the organization as I move from role to role -- getting the different perspectives from the different leaders that I've been able to work with as I moved up through the organization has certainly helped.”
Platte River “has always been an organization that has a culture of helping, learning and having those other leaders help me through the different roles that I've held has certainly helped me a lot to prepare for this role and having that overall holistic view of how the organization works will be another aspect that will help me through and being successful in this role.”
Hunter noted that in his role, “my team and I are accountable for long term planning and the day-to-day operations of Platte River’s generating assets, power delivery assets, fiber assets and all the facilities that support them, including all security.”
He is also responsible for the generation and delivery of safe, reliable and environmentally responsible electricity.
This includes the infrastructure at the Rawhide Energy Station, which includes Rawhide Unit 1, which is a 280 MW coal unit “and then we have five GE gas combustion turbines on site as well. On the transmission side, we have eight wholly-owned substations and then 21 other substations that we have equipment in that we operate and maintain We have approximately 815-ish miles of sub transmission lines.”
Fiber infrastructure “is a critical piece to our organization and that infrastructure supports broadband in our owner communities and then moving forward the division will be highly involved with the energy transition to meet our internal resource diversification policy,” he said.
“As we transition away from more thermal resources into renewable resources, we want to be able to continue to serve safe, reliable and environmentally responsible energy. That's going to be new to Platte River. We're kind of flipping the organization 180 compared to what we've done over the last 50 years and so we're going to have to really look at how we do business moving forward with new assets and especially when we join the SPP RTO in April of 2026.”
Substation Project
In the interview, he was given an opportunity to highlight recently completed or ongoing projects at Platte River Power Authority.
In particular, he discussed the Severance Substation.
“This project is being built to accommodate a little over 250 megawatts of solar energy that Platte River will be getting through a purchase power agreement. And what also is in the works for that substation is a 100 MW, four-hour battery project that will be interconnected through that same substation,” he said.
The new Severance substation was partially energized on Jan.10 and full energization was successful on Feb. 7, noted Maia Jackson, Senior Communications & Marketing Specialist at Platte River, on Feb. 26. It is now connected to the Timberline/Ault corridor. “Adding this substation was an integral step for the Black Hollow Solar project and we expect to have commercial energization for phase 1 of that this summer,” she said.
Generation Project
Hunter also discussed a new generation project “that we have in store.”
Platte River will be constructing fived GE LM6000 aero derivative turbines at the Rawhide Energy Station “and this will support the intermittency of the significant amount of renewables that we will be adding to our system. And it will somewhat replace the energy after Rawhide Unit 1 is retired at the end of 2029.”
This project will help with the reliability as Platte River brings on more renewable resources, he noted.
“And then transitioning from coal as a baseload to wind and solar comes with unique challenges and we're trying to meet the three-pronged approach of battery storage, VPP and thermal dispatchable capacity. We're looking to have that project commercial in Q1 of 2028. We'll start breaking ground -- probably Q1 of 2026, so about a two-year long construction project.”
It's important for Platte River” to continue to provide electricity that is seamlessly reliable to our owner communities as we move through this energy transition.”
Platte River Employees and Energy Transition
A third project Hunter discussed is the Platte River transition plan for employees.
“As we move through this energy transition, it's been very clear by Platte River leadership that we're not going to be leaving any employee behind,” he said.
It's important “to take care of our employees and make sure that they are recognized as our number one asset just as we support our owner communities is at the heart of what we do, ensuring that we have a solid plan for our employees during this transition is a project that is important to me and others throughout the organization and building a solid workforce transformation program will be a major focus of mine and for others throughout the organization over the next few years.”
