Time to build, renew again
North Dakota’s electric cooperatives serve about 35 percent of the state’s population with affordable, dependable electric power. The task of delivering that power to your homes, farms and businesses is a serious responsibility for us, and one that’s also expensive.

To date, electric cooperatives have invested nearly $900 million in the distribution lines, poles and related facilities that gets that power to your meter. In addition, electric cooperatives have invested another $5 billion or so in high-voltage transmission and generating plants that provide power to our state and surrounding Great Plains states.

Yet, there is always more to do, as the job of electrifying rural America is never done. As spring brings the frost out of the ground, North Dakota’s electric cooperatives are again going to make major investments in the plant and equipment needed to distribute power to you, our members.
In fact, a survey we just completed of those co-ops involved in the distribution of electric power shows that they will invest about $108 million this year; $94 million next year; and $92 million in 2010 in plant and facilities. This investment does not factor in the hundreds of millions more that will be invested in power supply and high-voltage transmission lines by electric cooperatives in the state over the next three years.

At the local level, there are several factors driving this significant investment:

• Serving the oil patch: Demand for electric power in the oil patch of western North Dakota is at record levels. Oil companies use electric energy to pump, transport and process oil and natural gas reserves. With the price of oil at record highs, oil companies want power at many new sites, and in many cases they want it now. In fact, just about half the money that will be invested each year for next three years will go to build or upgrade facilities to serve oil-related loads.
• Serving renewable energy: It takes electric energy to produce a lot of the renewable energy that this country demands and desires to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy. The new and proposed ethanol plants and wind farms being built across the state need to be hooked to the electric grid. North Dakota’s electric cooperatives are proud to be the retail supplier of electricity to most of these new facilities. In addition, as farmers across the state gear up to produce more corn, soybeans and other row crops to provide as feed stock for bio fuels, co-ops need to upgrade power lines to deliver the electricity needed to handle, dry and store these crops.
• Serving housing growth: Urban America continues to grow into rural America. As it does, North Dakota’s electric cooperatives are serving more suburban housing developments. This housing growth is projected to continue in North Dakota, even though there’s some concern of recession in other parts of the country. These housing developments mostly all require the use of underground power lines, which cost nearly twice as much to install as overhead poles and lines.
• Replacing aging plant: Much of the rural electric infrastructure is now 60 or 70 years old. Power lines, poles and transformers built in the 1940s and 50s must now be regularly replaced at great cost. For example, it now costs about $20,000 for the materials and installation of one mile of rural electric distribution line. Underground facilities to serve in the more urban areas typically run about $37,500 per mile. In both cases, the costs are more than double those of a decade ago.

As you can see, there’s a lot happening in North Dakota right now, and we’re committed to making the investments needed to keep powering this economic opportunity.