by Brad Dolinski
Good morning NIECI,
It’s finally here. Most folks are excited about the Minnesota fishing opener. I don’t get pumped up for that one. My excitement comes this weekend. I have been blessed to fish with family and friends in Canada since I was about 8 years old. Tomorrow morning I’m heading up North to start the season with friends. Cathy and the girls will join me later in the week and I’ll have a couple of days with them before my parents join us. I am beyond excited to hear the loons calling, the rattle of the dice cup, and joy of being with family and friends; it’d be great if we made it out fishing too.
This month is the Annual Meeting edition of the WATTS. There are several graphs and I want to point a couple of them out. Miles of line: it appears we didn’t put in very many miles of underground line this year. In fact, we were able to make some key reroutes of older lines. This reduces the total miles we need to maintain and makes the system more efficient. We also were able to reduce our overhead miles of line by 22 miles. This was another big year of construction and focused on reliability of the system.
Wholesale power cost and power purchased: these graphs looked a little confusing at first. It appears that our power cost was way down for 2023. Yes, it was, but it is directly related to much lower sales. We sold four million less kWh in 2023 than we did in 2022. This directly affects operations at North Itasca. Thankfully, the weather in 2023 was not as violent as we have seen in the past. We were able to tighten down and had a good year. There was a credit in the power cost adjustment from Great River Energy at the end of the year. We were able to use this credit to the benefit of all. We deferred the credit into 2024 to help to push back rate increases.
Through unstable times of the past several years North Itasca Electric has worked very hard to not have large rate increases. We have put a significant focus on the reliability of the system. We will continue to focus on the areas that are prone to outages, and if everything comes together with a large grant, we will bury many miles of overhead single-phase lines.
On occasion I focus too much on the unknown. Things are changing and I’m very worried about the cost increases that could be coming. Taking a step away from that, North Itasca Electric is in a very good place today. That is no small feat, and it is because of the compassionate, hard-working employees I am proud to work with.
Of course, our Board of Directors plays a large role in the success of this organization also. The Board of Directors stays current, connected, and uses their diverse background to set the strategic direction of the organization. Thank you to all employees and directors for your commitment to the Member-Owners of NIECI.
I was at an Energy Transition Itasca Community Taskforce meeting last night. I was reminded again why we are here. We are here to serve the communities that built us so many years ago. We are here to do what we can to support your efforts. My neighbors in Squaw Lake showed me how much they care about their community and everyone in it.
We have a big lift coming, folks. The whole energy transition is focused on what could happen if the large power plant in Cohasset shuts down. This will affect your taxes, school district and cost of power. We need to come together to help lead the change in our communities. We need our voices to be heard and listened to. We shared the meeting information on our Facebook page; you can also find out more about this movement by visiting Itasca Economic Development Association’s website or Facebook page.
One last thought to share this month. I want to give a huge shout out to our volunteers of the communities!!! Wow, you folks are amazing. I was watching the baseball coaches in Bigfork at the kids practice, I was laughing and so proud of my communities. Our Fire and Ambulance departments, hats off for continued commitment during difficult times and added stress of financial and regulatory burdens. All our high school coaches and teachers working those extra programs that put smiles on the kids’ faces, thank you. Like I said above, our community volunteers that show up to the meetings – thank you for making this a better place every day.
By your side! Miigwech
Brad
