Colorado’s second-largest electricity provider — the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association — is set to lose nearly a quarter of its revenue as member electric cooperatives wholly or partially leave the group, a potentially crippling blow.

But what it will mean for the nonprofit provider of wholesale power to 42 rural co-ops in four states, including 17 in Colorado with 862,000 customers, remains uncertain as it awaits decisions in several cases pending before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC.

What is clear, executives at member co-ops, industry analysts, and competing power wholesalers say, is that the 75-year-old Tri-State is at a crossroads.

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Some cooperatives are looking to generate more of their own electricity or buy it on the open market, hence the loss of revenue. At the same time, there is increasing pressure on the association, once heavily powered by coal-fired generation, to move to wind, solar and energy storage.

“The all-powerful generation and transmission model that has dominated the West is breaking down,” said Seth Feaster, an energy analyst with the nonprofit Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. “Tri-State is not going to come out of this process the way it looked before.”

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Read more at ColoradoSun.com.