Three rural Iowa electrical coops are getting a combined 20 million dollars in federal loan money. Prairie Energy Cooperative in Clarion got a six-million-dollar loan to help offset the costs of connecting 78 more customers. Prairie’s Sarah Olson-McLaughlin says the loan will help them keep up with maintenance.
Extending and maintaining a power grid is expensive. This is particularly a challenge for rural electrical grids that have fewer users and serve more miles. Prairie’s 43-hundred members are spread over eleven Iowa counties. Olson-McLaughlin says a transformer would cost 830 dollars two years ago and that price has more than doubled. The per-foot cost of wire is up and the cost of poles has increased as much as 64 percent. Theresa Greenfield is the state director of the USDA’s Rural Development Department, and says the rising costs have a big impact the rural projects.
The U-S-D-A has invested one-point-one billion dollars in rural Iowa electric programs since 2021.
