Inland Power & Light Co., the Spokane-based electric cooperative, posted net margins of about $3.5 million for last year, down 27 percent from 2009, but CEO Kris Mikkelsen says she was generally pleased with its performance, given the weak economy.

"Actually, I think we had a pretty good year," Mikkelsen says. "Sales volume was down, but revenues were pretty good."

Inland Power's big drop in net margins, she says, was due mostly to its 2009 sale of its former headquarters building and land at 320 E. Second, which skewed its nonoperating margins upward that year by about $1 million.

For the nonprofit co-op, net margins are the equivalent of a for-profit company's net income. Inland Power last year had operating margins of $3.2 million, down about 10 percent from 2009, and nonoperating margins of $329,000, down $965,000 from the prior year.

Its operating revenue, meanwhile, inched up 1.8 percent last year to $55.9 million. Its cost of power, which represents the biggest portion of its total cost of electric service, fell 2.6 percent, to $27.4 million, but that savings was offset by higher administrative and operations-and-maintenance expenses.

Inland Power moved in September of 2009 to larger headquarters at 10110 W. Hallett Road, on the West Plains.

The co-op added 250 new members last year, boosting its overall membership to 38,450, and refunded $1.25 million in what are called capital credits to its members, which is the same amount it had refunded in five of the six prior years. Capital credits are sums returned to members in the form of checks out of any revenue surplus above what the cooperative needs to cover operating expenses and capital expenditures.

As for the rest of this year, Mikkelsen says, "We think it's probably going to look pretty similar to 2010. We've got really flat growth on the system."

Inland Power raised its rates 8.5 percent last spring, mostly because of the need to pass along a 7 percent increase in the wholesale price the co-op pays the Bonneville Power Administration.

The BPA enacted the wholesale price increase in October of 2009—its first rate hike in six years—but Inland Power opted to delay increasing its rates until six months later to minimize the impact on its members.

Mikkelsen says the BPA expects to raise its rates again later this year—perhaps by around 10 percent, although the exact size of the increase is yet to be determined—but Inland Power will seek to delay raising its customers' rates again until 2012 or 2013.