Energy Transition in Rural America (May 2022) - Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative
By Jiaqun Wang
On Wednesday, May 18th, our Energy Transition in Rural America class visited the headquarters of Mountrail-Williams Electric Co-op (MWEC) in Williston, ND. During the visit, we were fortunate to have a lunch discussion with MWEC’s General Manager, Dale Haugen. After lunch, Mr. Haugen gave our group a presentation introducing MWEC’s recent rapid growth. Then, we followed Mr. Haugen walking through MWEC’s headquarters to have a real taste of operating an electric utility—including the opportunity for four of us to strap in and ride up a bucket truck! Kathy Neset from Neset Consulting, an MWEC member, also joined the MWEC tour.
During the visit, we walked through the whole headquarters of the MWEC. We visited MWEC's data center, conference room, control center, warehouse, service vehicle bay, control system, and emergency backup power system. The neatness and scale of the MWEC headquarters left a deep impression on us visitors.
Challenges through Historic Growth
MWEC has experienced rapid growth with challenges in the last few decades. The co-op is located in northwest North Dakota, which is in the heart of oil fracking country. MWEC projects the oil industry will contribute over 50% of the Co-op's revenue in 2023. But MWEC’s roots are more humble. MWEC started with the merger of two smaller electric co-ops (Mountrail Electric & Williams Electric) that formed in the 1950s before intensive oil customers came to the area. Those two co-op decided to merge in 1991 to do "better things together." While the oil industry boomed in the region, MWEC began to face strong electricity demand growth. The co-op’s total energy sales increased over 1300% from the pre-oil boom to now. The fast growth trend did not stop in the following decade. In 2010, MWEC forecasts indicated that within 15 years, the co-op's electricity demand would rise more than fivefold.
To prepare, MWEC urgently needed to quickly build more facilities in a short period to meet massive needs. To support its forecasted growth, MWEC had to increase its number of substations six-fold from the pre-oil boom, and power line growth had to increase 160% compared to the pre-oil boom. The total plant value of MWEC rose nearly 1000%. Behind such rapid growth are various challenges that MWEC employees have had to overcome. Mr. Haugen described how MWEC needed to overcome financial and legal difficulties and needed many employees with specific skills to join the co-op. Mr. Haugen described the difficulty of finding qualified employees and of seeking funding and legitimacy as a cooperative.
During that challenging time of unprecedented rapid growth, Mr. Haugen contacted contractors within the Midwest including neighboring IOU’s like Ottertail Power’s Avenia , MDU Resources’ Rock Mountain Contractors, and many other organizations for support. Mr. Haugen eventually found many reliable contractors from different states (WI; MN; ND; SD; CO; MT; ID) to support the MWEC expansion process. Through such unremitting efforts, MWEC overcame challenges and became an electric cooperative serving a significant fraction of North Dakota’s fracking industry with more than 22,000 meter and 8,150 members. In 2021, MWEC achieved 99.98% reliability in its power delivery throughout the year.
Contemporary Challenges
MWEC is also facing challenges now. Less than a month before our visit, a blizzard with 2 inches of rain with 10-12 inches of snow , along with severe winds, hit the MWEC service area. This was the worst storm in MWEC’s recent history and severely affected MWEC's power distribution system, causing massive blackouts. According to the data provided by Mr. Haugen, the average age of the US power system is about 40-60 years old, and 25% of the power equipment has reached the age that needs to be reevaluated. For MWEC, the situation becomes more challenging: Mr. Haugen indicated that the age of some MWEC's power systems is between 75-80 years. That age makes the damage from the blizzard worse. MWEC staff indicated that more than 3,000 plus poles needed to be replaced in this outage. During those repair days, MWEC needs to spend millions of dollars per day to restore power.
Looking to the Future
“By this I mean, that we have the tools to be prepared for the growth of new disturbed energy resources, such as solar power and energy storage, along with the rapidly changing energy needs to serve our large and smaller members.”
-Dale Haugen
The current capacity of MWEC is 550MW, making it one of the largest and fastest growing distribution co-ops in the country. The co-op expects the oil-related load to increase by 400MW after ten years, which will bring the total load to 950MW. But this might only be the beginning of the story of MWEC’s potential growth just over the horizon. On January 26th 2022, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota announced one of the biggest data centers in the world will be built in Williston, ND. This center will be a “global hub” that focuses on high-performance computing and cryptocurrency mining. MWEC expects the new data server farms in the area to bring a load growth of 600MW. MWEC is optimistic about growth prospects and maintains links with academic institutions such as the South Dakota School of Mines to attract talented employees and prepare for future change.