Rural Electric Cooperatives Get Funding from USDA
Rural electric cooperatives that own infrastructure across 21 states have landed some much-needed financing from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for infrastructure improvements. The Trump Administration has pushed the USDA to increase its project funding scope, and this is just the latest example. This particular round of financing comes in the form of $1.6 billion in loans and loan guarantees.
How Will the Rural Electric Cooperatives Utilize the Funding?
The funds will be used to build or improve over 9,000 miles of electric transmission and distribution lines serving approximately one million residential and business customers. Additionally, about $386 million is earmarked for smart grid technology designed to quickly detect and address power changes, anomalies and interruptions.
The USDA has posted the details of how the funding will be disbursed on its website. You can find the listing here. The projects range from a $200,000 loan to Nespelem Valley Electric Cooperative (serves 1,500 customers in the State of Washington) to mitigate the financial impact of the coronavirus outbreak, to a $727 million loan to Seminole Electric Cooperative (serves 1.8 million residents and businesses in Florida) to build a new natural-gas-fired, combined-cycle generation facility.
Other project examples include the development of fiber-optic cable networks for smart grid communications, building new high-voltage transmission lines, connecting new customers to the local grid, replacing worn poles, building solar farms, and even one project to build a headquarters building.
I think this is great news, not only for customers of the participating rural electric cooperatives, but also for the field of utility emergency preparedness in general.
Let’s face it, most of these utility infrastructure upgrades should likely have happened years ago, which means that overall reliability has probably been sub-optimal up to this point. By investing in T&D, generation, and communication infrastructure, reliability is sure to improve, which means fewer outages and happier customers going forward!
