Republished with permission from the May 2025 issue of the Bulletin magazine. Copyright 2025 by Northwest Public Power Association. All rights reserved.
In September 2023, Ron Catlett awoke to howling winds and cracking tree branches. Arriving to work at Flathead Electric Cooperative in Kalispell, Montana, Catlett’s first call of the day was from Rob Ratkowski, Director of Glacier Park International Airport. Ratkowski knew Catlett from his previous employment with U.S. Senator Steve Daines.
“Ron, I know you were just hired at the Co-op,” Ratkowski said, “And I don’t even know what you’re doing for them, but we’ve got a power outage and delayed flights that are going to turn into cancellations if this goes on.”
Ratkowski was in luck. Catlett had been hired that week as a Key Member Specialist.
Flathead had recently reimagined a program that much of the utility world knows as Key Accounts. It made the strategic choice to utilize the word “member,” as opposed to “account,” as a nod to the ways cooperatives are uniquely positioned to partner with their key member-owners.
Traditional key accounts programs often focus on meeting growth and revenue targets and attracting new businesses. Today, Flathead’s is a very different approach.
Who is key?
Cooperatives are founded on the principle that they are voluntary organizations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership. What makes a member “key” to a cooperative? Does a Key Member program mean that some members are more important than others? In short: no. However, in the evolving landscape of energy management, some cooperatives have determined that fostering two-way relationships with certain members is key to the success of all members.
At Flathead, part of navigating population growth, increased energy consumption, and generation and transmission concerns is taking its Key Account program down to the studs and rebuilding. Today, Flathead provides personalized, proactive, and comprehensive support to key organizations, which include its largest energy consumers, critical infrastructure providers, and wildly popular tourist destination Glacier National Park, too.
A perfect storm
Founded in 1937, Flathead originally electrified 82 miles of line to support 117 farms. Eighty-eight years later, Flathead is Montana’s largest electric cooperative, and second-largest energy utility. Flathead serves 76,000+ meters and 59,000+ members, of which about 17% are nonresidential.
Over the years, Flathead’s Energy Services team informally worked with some of its largest members, particularly its industrial service rate class, to determine energy and money savings solutions for the member and the co-op. Prior to 2020, these relationships were largely reactive and loosely defined.
Andy Masa, Energy Services Supervisor, reflects, “I’ve worked here 20+ years, beginning as a staking engineer. Around 2020, Northwest Montana experienced a population explosion with a simultaneous increase in general energy consumption per consumer. Regionally, this growth was also accompanied by threats to generation. Together, it was a perfect storm to impact the affordability and reliability of our electricity distribution to all members – not just key members.”
Masa continued, “Before, Flathead didn’t worry too much about transmission constraints and generation availability. Today, that’s changed. We are now proactively taking steps to protect all members, and part of that is reimagining our Key Member program to effectively communicate with those members for the benefit of all.”
Key to communication
Flathead’s Community Relations department houses Masa’s four-person Energy Services team. Three staffers spend at least 25% of their time serving as Key Member Specialists to about 100 nonresidential accounts. These staff are the main point of contact for key members, ensuring streamlined communication and efficient access to services.
Community Relations Manager Katie Pfennigs shares, “We’ve had so much change in the last few years, and a big part of that came from realizing that we couldn’t ask all 59,000 members for their partnership on energy solutions in the same ways and expect success. Our Board had to decide which members to communicate more strategically with and why. We decided to prioritize our key members as the group with the most potential mutual benefit and the likeliest to help with reaching energy management goals.”
Why prioritize energy management goals?
Growth has increased Flathead’s average load to just under 200 MW. However, that average doesn’t tell the story of Flathead’s demand needs and transmission constraints. For example, on a cold January 2024 morning, peak demand hit a record 442 MW on a system subject to a 527 MW winter transmission limit designated by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), Flathead’s wholesale power provider. In a growing system, those transmission constraint numbers are troubling.
Flathead is also concerned about generation issues. Generation across the West is rapidly becoming less available, which is unsettling considering Flathead’s, and the region’s, continued growth. Carbon-intensive resources are being retired before planned renewable projects come online. Particularly troubling are the threats to some of the 31 hydropower projects on the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS). The lower Snake River dams, which provide key support to the FCRPS on bitterly cold days, have faced well-organized opposition. Flathead’s power supply was comprised of over 76% FCRPS hydro in 2023.
Pfennigs notes, “These generation concerns are multi-faceted. We are very concerned with literally keeping the lights on and the heat pumps running – but we’re just as worried about keeping power affordable for our members. Every additional kWh we have to purchase above the preference power we receive from the FCRPS is at a higher marginal cost, and cost increases are deeply impactful to our members.”
The storm of rapid growth with transmission constraints and a decline in generation underlined that creating new energy management goals was necessary to protect all members’ access to reliable, affordable energy. Flathead’s longstanding relationships with some of its larger members meant that it already appreciated the critical role that key organizations can play in managing generation and transmission challenges through energy efficiency, demand response programs, and distributed energy generation collaborations. Formalizing the program was an obvious step in meeting evolving energy management goals.
Program nuts and bolts
Tia Robbin, Chief Administrative Officer overseeing the Community Relations department, oversaw these changes. She reflects, “I spent a lot of time thinking about where to house the program and which staffers would thrive in striving towards our new key member goals. Eventually, I landed on Community Relations, as it’s a dynamic communications-focused group supporting all functions of member engagement.”
When it was time to move the conversation from philosophical to practical, Flathead determined that the Key Member Specialists should ideally each have an actual specialty. Two staffers already possessed the desired connections and skillsets: one in commercial/industrial energy efficiency and the other in distributed energy resources. The third desired specialty was government relations, which hiring Catlett accomplished.
Looking ahead
As Flathead evolves its Key Member program, it looks forward to conversations about demand response, load shedding agreements, and distributed energy generation projects. With transmission currently costing $3M – $5M per mile, and local generation unlikely due to the proximity of natural treasures like Flathead Lake and Glacier National Park, Flathead is investing in a strong Key Member program to manage some of its challenges. That includes supporting critical infrastructure providers like Glacier Park International Airport — whose early morning call and subsequent power restoration that September morning was just one example of how Fltahead’s personalized, proactive approach for key members is delivering value. Meanwhile, staff focus on the true key to any cooperative’s heart – building a brighter future for the Northwest Montana communities it serves.
Republished with permission from the May 2025 issue of the Bulletin magazine. Copyright 2025 by Northwest Public Power Association. All rights reserved.
