Mega loads – Partner in Progress

Mega loads – Partner in Progress

The utility industry, as a whole, is entering unchartered territory—with consumers and businesses alike using record breaking amounts of electricity. The demand is unlike anything we have yet experienced—even through the second industrial revolution when electricity helped skyrocket the production industry in this country. Today, what we are seeing is an energy evolution which centers around all things digital – artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, data mining, etc. Soon, this will expand further as technologies under development today are introduced into our society.

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Tim McCarthy
Sioux Valley Energy 
General Manager/
Chief Executive Officer

Sioux Valley Energy is forecasting that both our membership and electric load will nearly double in the next 25 years and those numbers may actually be conservative.

We are routinely getting electric service inquiries from businesses that are considered mega loads. These businesses are 100, 500, 1000 plus megawatts. To give you some perspective, a city the size of Brandon with all its residential, commercial, and industrial loads is somewhere in the 20-megawatt vicinity. As we plan for potential mega loads, we are cognizant of the investment that is necessary to serve them and are working to ensure infrastructure investments specific to those loads are not placed on the back of our existing members. The key will be to avoid cross-subsidization between our existing members and any new mega loads.

So that brings us to the question of how to balance all the considerations of providing electricity to our members. Those considerations are in the realms of reliability, cost, future demand, rate making, and service excellence.

Sioux Valley Energy’s Board of Directors and Strategic Leadership Team are working to strike that delicate balance. We recognize the importance of ensuring that our existing members have the reliable power they need while simultaneously planning for future growth. We also know that what sets Sioux Valley Energy apart from other utilities is the service we provide for our members. The service that frankly, our members expect and deserve. Each one of those considerations comes with some form of investment.

The impact of these investments will likely result in upward pressure on electric rates for several years. We know that isn’t what our members want to hear but our commitment to you is to be transparent about the upcoming rate challenges and to reasonably mitigate the impact of those pressures as much as possible, all while still maintaining reliability and service excellence.

The challenging aspect of rate pressure mitigation is that there is only a small percentage of costs that we can control without negatively impacting the high-quality service you have come to expect from your electric cooperative. On the bright side, Sioux Valley Energy is in the unique position of benefiting from substantial growth, which yes, does result in some costs, but ultimately is a net positive because as the membership grows, we are able to spread costs to a larger base which helps to hold rates down over the long run.

As we address these various challenges, we promise to be your partner in progress and to use our guiding principles as the foundation of every decision we make. Those principles include:

  1. Commitment to Safety
     
  2. Community Service
     
  3. Member Focus
     
  4. Dedication to Quality
     
  5. Value-Based Products and Services
     
  6. Responsible Growth

These principles are present in every mile of line we construct; every phone call we make; every community engagement we take part in; every technology we implement; and every employee interaction that we have. “Serving Our Members. Always.” isn’t just a tag line – it’s who we are and how we live at Sioux Valley Energy.

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