Feb. 12, 2025

This paid piece is sponsored by Sioux Valley Energy.

Positioning Sioux Valley Energy to meet the ongoing energy needs of its members requires preparation and planning. As part of this process, the cooperative engages in yearly, four-year and long-range planning to ensure its success.

The current four-year work plan totals $83 million, said Ted Smith, vice president of operations and engineering.

“The work that is included in this plan will prepare this cooperative to meet growing energy needs and maintain our 99.989 percent reliability for Sioux Valley Energy members,” he said.

“It lays the road map for all the projects we are going to do.”

Growth in nearly all areas of the cooperative’s service territory, along with an increasing demand for electricity, makes planning even more important.

Smith noted that it took Sioux Valley Energy 70 years to reach 500 megawatt hours of annual sales, a milestone reached in the early 2000s. That volume doubled in the past 20 years. The cooperative is poised to hit almost 1 million mWh sales in 2025 and foresees continued rapid growth in the next decade and a half.

“This is new growth and new members but also growth of existing members’ services,” Smith said. “We have diverse load growth with agriculture-heavy in some areas and suburban growth in others.”

“We are really growing all across our system,” added Chris Graff, director of operations, noting that ag growth tends to be in the northern reaches of the cooperative and residential growth is heavier in the Sioux Falls, Brandon and Hartford areas.

Among the activities to maintain Sioux Valley Energy’s 6,100 miles of line are tree trimming, underground locates and pole testing.

“This ensures integrity of our poles for years to come,” Smith said.

On the capital side, “we do a yearly plan and then longer range as part of our four-year work plan,” Graff added. “We are also looking out eight to 10 years and trying to address our current members’ needs as well as new growth.”

Sioux Valley Energy meets regularly with various communities, including Sioux Falls, to increase understanding of how their growth plans will impact the cooperative.

“They have a good plan of where development will be going as they open access to sewer, water and such. That gives us time to get out ahead of it,” Smith said, noting that the cooperative typically brings power into a development once curb and gutter are in place.

Each year, the cooperative seeks to rebuild 125 miles of line and typically adds 20 to 25 miles of line at a total cost of over $20 million. Sioux Valley Energy implemented the ambitious 125-mile plan to rebuild existing line in 2018. The rebuild includes stretches that are original to the system and have been in place for nearly 80 years.

“We are cognizant of reliability,” said Smith, noting that ensuring ongoing reliability is part of driving factors in the aggressive plan. “We have some of the best reliability of cooperatives in the nation. We think the things we are doing are impacting that.”

Infrastructure investment extends beyond Sioux Valley Energy. Its power suppliers, East River Electric Power Cooperative, L&O Power Cooperative and Basin Electric Power Cooperative, also will be investing significant dollars in transmission and generation resources.

“In total, the estimated 10-year investment for just Sioux Valley Energy members is approximately $440 million. Those investments include generation, transmission and distribution to support our cooperative members,” Smith said.

Learn more about the plan in the most recent episode of Sioux Valley Energy’s “Inside the Grid” podcast.

To listen, click below.