![]() ![]() is mostly mined and burned in North Dakota and Texas.Ĭoal from the Freedom Mine supplies Basin Electric’s power plants in North Dakota, as well as the Great Plains Synfuels Plant, a coal gasification facility owned by Basin Electric subsidiary Dakota Gasification Company. Lignite is a lower-quality form of coal, and within the U.S. Through its subsidiary Dakota Coal Company, Basin Electric “controls rights to lignite reserves in North Dakota and provides financing for the Freedom Mine” – the largest lignite coal mine in the United States. A map showing generation and transmission associations, with diagonal lines representing G&Ts that buy power from Basin Electric Basin Electric owns and operates a sprawling array of coal facilitiesīasin Electric is heavily reliant on coal, and owns a fleet of coal plants and a coal gasification facility, along with ownership stakes in coal mines.īasin operates four coal plants the 1700 megawatt Laramie River Station and the 385 megawatt Dry Fork Station in Wyoming, and the 666 megawatt Leland Olds and 900 megawatt Antelope Valley lignite coal plants in North Dakota. Tri-State, which sells power to cooperatives in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Nebraska, purchases a portion of that power from Basin Electric, although Tri-State generates more from its own power plants. Those entities then sell that power to electric cooperatives, which distribute it to retail customers. Somewhat unusually for generation and transmission associations, Basin Electric sells wholesale power mostly to other generation and transmission associations, so it is sometimes called a “Super G&T.” The generation and transmission associations that buy wholesale power from Basin Electric include East River Electric Power Cooperative, Northwestern Power Cooperative, Central Power Electric Cooperative, Rushmore Electric Power Cooperative, Central Montana Power Electric Cooperative, Upper Missouri Electric Cooperative, Corn Belt Power Cooperative, Members 1st Electric Cooperative, and Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. Basin Electric emitted more tons of carbon pollution in 2018 than any other cooperatively owned utility or generation and transmission association, according to the report. Bradley’s latest Benchmarking Air Emissions report. ![]() – and among the most carbon-intensive, according to M.J. It sold 20.1 million megawatt hours of electricity in 2018, making it the 39th largest power provider in the U.S. As a generation and transmission association, Basin Electric operates power plants and sells wholesale power, which is ultimately distributed by more than 100 electric cooperatives to homes and businesses in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.īasin Electric reported $2.3 billion in revenue in 2019, more than any other generation and transmission association, according to the National Cooperative Bank. We want more flexibility and local control to help us manage and even reduce costs.” Basin Electric affects millions of ratepayers in nine statesĪlthough the name Basin Electric doesn’t show up on customers’ electric bills, its decisions, power plants, policies, and rates affect millions of families and businesses in a vast region stretching from the borders with Canada to Mexico. Those challenges facing Basin Electric reflect the growing tension between some of the electric cooperatives that provide electricity to much of rural America, and the generation and transmission associations that sell wholesale power to those co-ops largely generated with increasingly uneconomic coal plants.Īs one co-op director put it, “Across America, the generation and transmission model is being challenged by the distribution cooperatives who own them. The generation and transmission association that provides electricity to large swaths of the rural West and Upper Midwest is facing increasing pressure from its member cooperatives and lenders about its reliance on coal, challenges to its rates in proceedings at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and efforts by some member cooperatives to end their contracts in order to purchase wholesale power from other providers. ![]()
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