**Title**: Energy in the North - Travis Million **Date**: September 3, 2025 **Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Travis Million 00:00:00:19 - 00:00:10:06 [Travis Million] We try to be as transparent with the bill as possible. Instead of just combining it all into one lump sum. We try to break it out so members can say, okay, this is where that money is going. 00:00:10:06 - 00:00:34:14[Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North, I speak with Travis Million, President and CEO of Golden Valley Electric Association. When GVEA members receive their electric bill in the mail or online, there is more information on the bill than just the amount of electricity use per month. I wanted to know more about this bill, and I started the conversation with Travis by asking him how much electricity the average resident uses in interior ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ. 00:00:34:14 - 00:00:52:178 [Travis Million] Our average residential member uses about 600 kilowatt hours in a month. we try to say an average, but it's really hard to say an average when you have different size of houses and different appliances that are electric versus fuel oil or propane or natural gas or some other source of energy. 00:00:52:17 - 00:01:10:18 [Amanda Byrd] when I turn the bill over look at this one, there's a whole lot of charges that are on the bill that are more than just the electricity. People get a little stumped on that sometimes. What are those charges? 00:01:10:18 - 00:03:38:13 [Travis Million] Yeah, so we've got a number of charges and try to be as transparent with the bill as possible. Instead of just combining it all into one lump sum. We try to break it out so members can say, okay, this is where that money is going. So I just kind of walking through your customer charge, that's primarily the charge to you just to be a member of the co-op. That's for processing the bills, that's for member services. Everything that goes into that is kind of fill within your customer charge. Your utility charge is focused on your poles, your wires, the maintenance, the laborer, everything that it takes to basically run the utility - falls within the utility charge. Your fuel and purchase power, that's the money it takes in order to purchase the electricity. That could be the fuel for the power plant. So whether that's coal or fossil fuels, it could be purchasing power from other entities, whether it's the University, Aurora Energy or others all go within that fuel and purchase power. And those are based on how many kilowatt hours you consume. So obviously it's a price per kilowatt hour. So the more kilowatt hours you consume, the more that cost is going to be on your on your bill, where your customer charges a flat rate, it doesn't change month to month. It's continuously the same as you go through. We have regulatory costs. We're regulated by the Regulatory Commission of ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ, and so we have payments that we have to make to them. And so we pass that on to our members as part of our regulated regulation. And obviously that's also on a per kilowatt hour basis. But if you look, it's a very small amount per kilowatt hour, but there's still a fee that we have to pay as part of the regulatory commission. There's an ERO. So that is the electric reliability organization, we hear it also as the RRC, the Rail Belt Reliability Organization, which is a regulatory entity, that was some legislation that was passed a few years back that we have to pay into. And so that is passed on to the membership as well. And then at the very bottom is your Goodcents donation. So if you contribute or you participate in the Goodcents program, that contribution comes out of there as well. So again, we try to break it out so you can see we're, you know, all these different costs go to. But ultimately, you know, a lot of members, including myself, if you look at the bottom line of how much does it cost for electricity, But this really just tries to break it out to show you where those costs are actually flowing to. 00:03:38:13 - 00:03:52:05 [Amanda Byrd] Travis Million is President and CEO of Golden Valley Electric Association, and I'm Amanda Byrd, Chief Storyteller for the ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ Center for Energy and Power at ÃÛÌÒÓ°Ïñ. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.