11 dollars off your power bill

and getting there costs 80 million dollars.

Golden Valley Electric's board just voted to keep studying a used generator, and the vote was four to three after about two hours of arguing.

Here's the machine. It's a 60 megawatt turbine, basically a jet engine bolted to the ground, and it would sit at the North Pole plant next to the one Golden Valley already runs. Used, not new.

It burns a liquid fuel refined from oil. Eighty million dollars is real money, and it lands on the same bills it's meant to lower.

The co-op's math says that over a thirty year payback, the average home's monthly bill drops by close to eleven dollars. Eleven dollars a month is not nothing when you're staring down a winter bill in the Interior.

But thirty years is a long time to be right about a used engine. That's roughly what the three no votes were about.

The board chair said it's a very large strategic generation purchase for a utility, and they want to make sure they've turned over every stone.

This isn't the kind of thing a co-op board settles in an afternoon. Four to three means it isn't settled now.

Nothing's been bought yet, and the board takes it up again next month.

And every member in the Interior is on the hook for whichever way it goes.