Electricity

A higher version of Adobe Flash Player is required to view this content. Download the Flash Player.

It’s a simple fact of life: electricity is essential for everyone, everywhere.

Today, Basin Electric is known as one of the most progressive electric cooperatives in America. Whether its renewable energy, fuel diversity, or clean coal, Basin Electric is leading the way for generation and transmission cooperatives and other electric utilities nationwide.

Basin Electric is working with our member systems to ensure that electricity for rural America remains reliable and affordable. In response to significant member load growth, we are building new baseload and peaking units and exploring the viability of renewable energy technologies for generating bulk wholesale power.

New ideas for a brighter future

Basin Electric is at the forefront of technological innovation.

G&T resources

Visit these pages to learn more about our generation resources:

Check out the Transmission pages to learn about the systems Basin Electric owns and maintains.

We believe that innovation will bring new technologies into the U.S. generation mix. Tremendous advancements are being made in using fuel alternatives to coal to generate electricity. Other fuels and renewable resources such as wind, gas, biofuels, and waste heat are a part of Basin Electric’s total generation, and we are selling the green tags from our green and renewable resources to benefit the economics of those resources. We have also begun new load management practices and energy conservation initiatives while seeking partners to provide technologies that will capture and sequester CO2 emissions from conventional coal-based power plants.

Basin Electric is an international leader in efforts to generate cleaner energy from coal and gas while capturing and sequestering resulting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Our subsidiary, Dakota Gasification Company,operates one of three facilities world-wide that capture, compress, and sequester some of its CO2 emissions. With the help of a partner we are working to advance a new carbon capture technology at Basin Electric's Antelope Valley Station near Beulah, ND, in what may become the first commercial-scale application of its kind in the United States.

Whether we're running on coal, wind, natural gas, hydro or oil, or ramping up our generation to fulfill peak demand, you can be sure that we've got the power for our consumers.

Top of page

Generation portfolio

To see Basin Electric's generation portfolio, go to At A Glance.

Giant power

During the 1950s, a former Federal Power Commission chairman, Leland Olds, advocated the practicality of developing "giant power" on the Great Plains of the Upper Midwest. He suggested integrating federal transmission with new power plants fueled by low-sulfur coal, and then pooling the cooperatives' federal hydropower allocations to meet power demand in the region. Spurred by his plan, Basin Electric constructed its first power plant, a single, 216-megawatt unit: Leland Olds Station, Unit 1 near Stanton, ND.

From that small plant, Basin Electric has evolved into a regional network of electric generating and transmission facilities that bring power to our member cooperatives in nine states.

Learn more

How electricity is made (PDF)