FEMA has approved $15.8 million in Public Assistance to assist in recovery from winter storms and flooding that occurred in 2022. This funding reimburses the Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative $15,888,023 for labor and contracts to repair the cooperative’s power transmission and distribution systems damaged during the storm. This funding covers project and repair costs from April 21, 2022, to June 19, 2022, and represents a 75 percent federal cost-share for the project. To date, North Dakota has received more than $58 million in assistance for the 2022 disaster. [FEMA Approves $15.8 Million for Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative]Ice storms and other calamities driven by anthropogenic climate hijinx routinely knock out electric power often resulting in lost lives and the inevitable cyber attacks on the US will take down the grid for days, even months causing food shortages and mayhem but the addition of virtual power plants or VPPs can change that handling some twenty percent of peak power demand by 2030.
$100 million spent on subsidizing, manufacturing, transporting, erecting and maintaining the Prevailing Winds project would take some 8,000 Basin Power subscribers off the grid. That's right: primary power purchaser Bismarck, North Dakota-based Basin Electric Power Cooperative is an oligopoly paying Prevailing Winds, LLC to rip up land and disturb cultural resources sacred to numerous Indigenous peoples for a grid that has never been more vulnerable to attack and to climate disruptions.
The average cost of a household photovoltaic system has dropped below $3/watt or around $12,810 before tax credits are factored in. Leaving the grid has never been easier so anyone who can afford to it should do it now and with Trump still in the running for the White House it's never been more urgent.
It's just a matter of when the next disaster will enrich a utility but even government can't always protect you from your own stupidity.
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