To the Editor:
The member/owners of Dakota Energy are fortunate to have Basin Electric and East River as their power supplier and transmission agent. Basin Electric and East River have coal generation, hydro allocation, gas generation, wind generation, and produces natural gas and fertilizer as byproducts.
Basin also buys from the open market. They have been established and reliable for many years. They are locally owned and managed.
All types of generation are needed to cover the load demand in all types of weather. To see the percentages of the various types of generation, go to spp.org and click on “Generation Mix.” If you do this under various weather conditions, you will see how the percentages change. Southwest Power Pool (SPP) is the regional independent electric system operator in our area. Its jurisdiction extends from North Dakota to Texas. It schedules the generation, transmission, and distribution to match the projected and existing electrical loads.
Meredith Angwin in her book, “Shorting the Grid,” describes greenwashing as “A form of marketing spin in which green values and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization’s products, aims, and policies are environmentally friendly. The term is usually used to describe a company whose environmental rhetoric is nobler than its practices.”
Her book discusses the electrical conditions throughout the United States and grid management. It is a good book to read to get a background of the electrical grid. Angwin and C.J. Brown from SPP were two of the six presenters at the SDSU Center for Power System Studies seminar (Biennial SoDaRP Conference) in October 2022.
Twyla Folk
Huron
