Funds will be used to make critical grid upgrades in the Cooke City area.

Flathead Electric Cooperative vehicle in Cooke City, Montana.

Flathead Electric Cooperative (FEC) received a $4,283,979 Community Affordability, Resilience, and Energy Decarbonization Grant (CARED) to make critical upgrades to its electric system in the Cooke City area. The existing grid will receive new meters supporting a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, vegetation management aided by satellite imagery to further wildfire mitigation efforts, and a microgrid BESS (battery energy storage system). A microgrid is a power system that is detached from the main electric grid either full-time or for a specific event, like a power outage. Collectively, these improvements will greatly enhance energy affordability and resilience in this area on Montana’s southern border.

Ashley Keltner, Distributed Energy Supervisor at FEC, shared, “Many members of Flathead Electric don’t realize that we also distribute electricity in Cooke City and the Silver Gate area. That relationship is the result of FEC’s 1998 buyout of PacifiCorp. Outages are frequent in this remote, heavily treed area. The CARED grant allows our member-owned, not-for-profit co-op to invest in the electric distribution system at a very low cost. We anticipate up to a 70% reduction in outages after we install the BESS that will power the Cooke City and Silver Gate areas during outages caused by faults on the Wyoming side of the distribution lines.”

Flathead Electric Cooperative vehicle in Cooke City, Montana.
Cooke City, Montana. Brian Serna photo, Flathead Electric Cooperative.

Flathead Electric is a member of a consortium of 7 electric co-ops, along with the National Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (NRECA), selected to collectively receive $45+ million via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) Energy Improvements in Rural or Remote Areas (ERA) .

NRECA’s consortia bids allow smaller electric co-ops to work together to submit competitive applications for infrastructure funds. This consortium project will deploy microgrids to improve grid resilience and reliability in 7 rural communities nationwide. The participating cooperatives will leverage their experiences to share learnings with other co-ops across the country.

NRECA CEO Jim Matheson said, “This funding is an important step as electric co-ops work to improve access to affordable and reliable energy in rural America. By deploying microgrids in communities across the country, co-ops are exploring new ways to keep the lights on and meet tomorrow’s energy needs.”

The other consortium participants are:

Visit flatheadelectric.com/CARED to learn more.

Courtney Stone

All Posts