Who Gets the Power from the Holcomb Coal Plants?

Sunflower Electric is seeking a permit to build three new 660 megawatt coal-fired power plants about four miles south of Holcomb, Ks. They will be called Holcomb 2, 3 & 4. Holcomb 1, a 360 MW coal plant at this location, commenced operation in 1983.

Sunflower Electric serves only 115,000 people in western Kansas, so why would they need to increase the size of their base load capacity by a factor of more than 6? The answer is, they don't. Almost all of this new power will be owned by other electricity distributors and sold to customers outside of Kansas.

All the power from Holcomb 3 & 4 will belong to Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and will be sold to customers in Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska and Wyoming. Golden Spread Coop will own 400 MW of the capacity from Holcomb 2. It will be sold to its customers in Oklahoma and Texas. Sunflower says it will sell 150 MW from Holcomb 2 to its member coops and to Mid-Kansas Electric. Thus Kansans will receive only about 8% of the power from the expansion at Holcomb.