Posted on Oct 12, 2020
Ubiquity Management, LP (Ubiquity), an investor in critical communications infrastructure throughout the United States, recently announced that it has completed the acquisition of Millennium Telcom, LLC d/b/a OneSource Communications, a provider of fiber-fed broadband services in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, from Tri-County Electric Cooperative. OneSource’s fiber network is within 1,000 feet of approximately 72,000 homes and businesses, and with 6,100 existing customers, the company is positioned for significant growth. The growing residential and business population within the service...
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Posted on Oct 9, 2020
The Trump Administration and Department of Agriculture Rural Development State Director for Missouri announced that eight rural electric cooperatives in Missouri will receive $5.5 million to create jobs and increase economic opportunities throughout the state. The funding will support infrastructure improvements, business development, housing and high-speed internet access in rural areas, amongst other things.
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Posted on Oct 5, 2020
A proposed merger of two northeast Kansas electric cooperatives was recently rejected by coop members. The Boards of Trustees for Nemaha-Marshall Electric Cooperative Association in Axtell, Kansas and Doniphan Electric Cooperative Association in Troy, Kansas had unanimously approved taking the proposed consolidation to their members. Kansas law requires that each cooperative receive at least two-thirds approval by members.
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Posted on Oct 2, 2020
The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) will use $6 million in Department of Energy (DOE) funding to develop and deliver its cybersecurity tool, Essence, to cooperatives nationwide. Essence continually monitors for cyber threats and enables the utility industry to share characteristics of an incident to help detect large, coordinated cyberattacks.
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Posted on Sep 28, 2020
The Department of Energy recently awarded the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association a $6 million grant to expand ongoing research and development into electric coop cybersecurity tools. Specifically, the grant will enable a three-year project, known as Essence 2.0, which will provide NRECA’s member cooperatives with a revolutionary cyber monitoring tool that enables machine-to-machine learning and is designed to quickly detect and share information about anomalies in utility network traffic. The Essence 2.0 project builds on NRECA’s existing cyber readiness and prevention tools and...
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Posted on Sep 25, 2020
Graham County Electric Coop will move forward with the potential sale of its natural gas division upon the affirmative two-thirds vote of its members on October 17th. The division has not made any money since 1989, is projected to lose $291,000 this year, and is $2.625 million in debt. Southwest Gas has expressed an interest in purchasing the division.
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Posted on Sep 23, 2020
Poudre Valley REA is working with the Red Feather Lakes community to install a microgrid, which will be a 140-kilowatt/448-kilowatt-hour battery with 3.2 hours of energy storage interconnected with generation resources.
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Posted on Sep 23, 2020
Through the Next Level Connections Broadband Grant Program, Indiana is awarding $36 million in state broadband grants to eight electric cooperatives to connect unserved areas.
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Posted on Sep 23, 2020
Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC) has installed and energized a new battery storage system, making it the first cooperative in Texas to utilize battery storage. The battery storage system can hold a total of 2.25 MWs of electricity for two hours and are charged by PEC’s Johnson City solar installation.
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Posted on Sep 21, 2020
US Sen. John Boozman and US Rep. Bruce Westerman recently announced that US Department of Agriculture (USDA) funds will go toward modernizing a power grid by installing fiber-optic cable to supply a secure high-speed communications path to nearly 60,000 Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative customers. Specifically, a $151 million investment through the Department’s Electric Infrastructure Loan Program will help Arkansans in 10 counties: Crawford, Franklin, Johnson, Logan, Madison, Newton, Pope, Scott, Sebastian and Yell.
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Posted on Sep 17, 2020
Pee Dee Electric Cooperative and Marlboro Electric Cooperative, neighboring cooperatives in South Carolina, have announced that they will enter into a management agreement, effective September 18, 2020.
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Posted on Sep 16, 2020
Independent power producer RPM Access LLC has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) to supply electricity from a 54-MW wind park in Iowa to Central Iowa Power Cooperative.
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Posted on Sep 15, 2020
Wildfires fueled by strong winds are ravaging western Oregon, destroying small towns served by electric cooperatives, forcing people to flee their homes, and spurring four coops to turn off power at night to avoid sparking new blazes. Ted Case, executive director of the Oregon Rural Electric Cooperative Association in Wilsonville said the wildfires have hit four of the state’s 18 coops hardest: Consumers Power Inc. in Philomath, Lane Electric Cooperative in Eugene, Blachly-Lane Electric Cooperative in Junction City and West Oregon Electric Cooperative in Vernonia.
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Posted on Sep 11, 2020
Seven Indiana electric coops will receive just over $36 million in grants from the Next Level Connections Broadband Grant Program, which is designed to strengthen broadband infrastructure investment in unserved areas of the state. A recent report estimated a return of nearly $4 to the local economy for every dollar spent on the necessary broadband infrastructure.
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