2024 Basin Bus Tour Recap

Knowing you have safe and reliable electricity is great to know, but do you really know how it is generated and what it takes to get it from Beulah, North Dakota?

On Wednesday, June 5th a tour bus loaded with members from Clay-Union Electric, B-Y Electric and Union County Electric set off to learn about how their power is generated and distributed.

Our first stop was be in Madison, SD to tour and visit with the folks at East River Electric, our generation & transmission cooperative.

On Thursday, June 6th our day started bright and early with the first stop at Dakota Gasification Company (DGC), a subsidiary of Basin Electric Power Cooperative. DGC owns and operates the Great Plains Synfuels Plant near Beulah, North Dakota. The Synfuels Plant is the only commercial-scale coal gasification facility in the United States that manufactures natural gas.

Our next stop was at the Antelope Valley Station, a coal fired power plant, although we were not able to tour the plant itself due to maintenance but our tour guides, Lindsey and Erin, did a fabulous job with the scaled model.

We were then taken to the Freedom Mine, where the bus was allowed to enter and drive to areas of the mine so the members could get a birds eye view of the equipment used to collect the coal. Cheri was wonderful about giving our members great information regarding the mine and how long it takes to collect the coal and the regulations regarding what the process is to reclaim the land to it's original state. (sorry no photos allowed for security)

On Friday we edged our way home with a stop in Pierre, where South Dakota Rural Electric Association meet us for lunch with a visit from their CEO Steve Barnett and PUC Commissioner Chris Nelson.

The Basin Bus tour is a biyearly event paid for by the cooperative to continue to educate its members on how they receive their electricity and the importance of a balanced mix of generation sources to provide safe, reliable, and affordable electricity to the members, now and into the future.

Below you will find photos of our trip.