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East River builds and maintains 250 miles of transmission line to serve Dakota Energy consumers
Since Ree Electric and Beadle Electric began decades ago and merged in 1995 to become Dakota Energy, East River Electric and its members have stood by their side to provide wholesale power and invest millions in infrastructure to provide power to their members. Because of immense growth in large consumers of electricity in Dakota Energy’s service territory since 2007, East River has invested millions more in infrastructure to serve these large consumers.
Overall, East River has built and continues to maintain 250 miles of transmission line in Dakota Energy’s service territory and built, owns and maintains 13 substations that serve their consumers. When a storm rolls through the area and takes down power lines, East River linemen and substation personnel respond to the outage and restore power. That’s the commitment to cooperative power supply. By continuing to invest in new infrastructure and maintenance of the poles, wires and substations that are already there, Dakota Energy and the other East River members share in the costs of building and maintaining the system. If Dakota Energy were to leave the East River family, where will they spread their risk if a new consumer wants to build in their area? How will they build transmission to serve new business?