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REGIONAL— Electricity consumers in Lake Country Power’s service territory are expected to benefit from two major federal grants designed to promote new ways of providing power, while …
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REGIONAL— Electricity consumers in Lake Country Power’s service territory are expected to benefit from two major federal grants designed to promote new ways of providing power, while reducing emissions from traditional power plants.
The awards were announced earlier this month and are part of the Empowering Rural America program, being overseen by the USDA’s Rural Development agency. More than $6 billion in grants were approved in all, helping to fund projects in 30 states, including Minnesota.
One of the largest awards nationally, a total of $795 million, will go to Twin Cities-based Great River Energy to assist in procuring 1,275 megawatts of renewable energy across Minnesota and North Dakota to service its member co-ops, which include Lake Country Power.
“Our consortium laid out an innovative portfolio of projects and power purchase agreements that will benefit cooperative members across Minnesota,” said Great River Energy President and Chief Executive Officer David Saggau. “The projects in our proposal will allow us to procure more than 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy while creating over 1,500 new jobs, saving our members $40 million on average annually, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by over 5 million tons and creating a host of benefits across the communities we serve.”
This projects, once completed, are expected to reduce greenhouse gases by the equivalent of taking 1.3 million gasoline-powered cars off the road.
Lake Country Power
Meanwhile, Lake Country Power will receive a $1.2 million award that the rural co-operative will use to modernize its demand side management system with up to 50 megawatts of dispatchable load as part of a virtual power plant, providing needed capacity for roughly 13,000 homes during peak times.
A virtual power plant is a network of distributed energy resources like rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle chargers, and home batteries, which are connected and managed together through software to act as a single power plant, allowing them to collectively respond to grid demands by adjusting their energy usage or generation as needed, essentially mimicking the function of a traditional power plant but without a single physical location.
It is estimated that Lake Country Power’s virtual power plant will save members $250,000 per month during the summer and $700,000 per month during the winter.