OUR
STORY
The Kansas Power Pool, one of two municipal energy agencies in Kansas, was established in 2004 under Kansas statutes with the execution of an agreement creating the Kansas Power Pool by six Kansas municipalities: Augusta, Burlington, Clay Center, Neodesha, Wellington, and Winfield. Municipal energy agencies in Kansas are not-for-profit quasi-municipal organizations that are owned by their member municipalities.
The Kansas Power Pool was organized as a pool to take collective action to preserve and invest in the members’ energy facilities to satisfy, in the most efficient manner possible, the members’ collective future energy and transmission requirements. To this end, the KPP’s operating philosophy is to equitably share resources and costs among all members through the computation of uniform annual wholesale electric rates approved by the members.
Over the next few years, the KPP philosophy attracted new members, which by 2010, totaled over thirty municipal electric utilities. In 2012, the KPP opted to acquire an ownership share of a natural gas-powered, combined-cycle generating facility. To finance the acquisition, the KPP issued revenue bonds, which it secured with long-term power purchase contracts with twenty-one member municipalities.
The value of a long-term commitment for electric energy was not shared by all members and membership in the KPP declined by 2014 to twenty-one municipalities. Three new members have since joined the KPP making the current total membership twenty-four in number.