Basin Electric’s procurement division makes valuable contacts there every year. On Jan. 26, contract administrator, Laura Skager, caught up with vendor Lawrence Slabodnik of Rocky Mountain Industrial Services, Denver. Watch the video to get a taste of the trade show and the connections made.

Dr. Jack Bacon presents.

The conference’s keynote speaker is Jack Bacon of Epoch Production. He is giving a presentation titled Nonlinear Thinking in Energy Generation and Transmission.

Breakout sessions are also scheduled throughout the three-day conference along with professional development sessions. The sessions include presentations on a variety of topics including electrical, engineering, environmental, mechanical, operations, personal/career development, safety and support services.

With about 200 exhibitor booths set up, conference attendees have a variety of vendors to visit.

Rod Wetsch and Mike Lewis of Dakota Gasification Company, and Russ Bosch, Duane Miller and Kelly Cozby of Basin Electric, are on the executive committee responsible for helping plan the event. They join 24 other industry representatives.

It is one of 16 new projects Chevrolet recently announced it is supporting to prevent up to 8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the air during the next five years. Of the 16 projects, six were chosen to be featured on Chevrolet’s website. The recovered energy generation unit is one of those six, billed as “Pipeline Heat Recovery” on the website.

Go to Chevy’s website to see the campaign. You’ll want to click on the icon to the right of the wind turbine: Carbon Stories

The Crow Lake Wind Project in South Dakota is another project featured. Click on the wind turbine for that one.

Don Applegate, director.

Collin is the grandson of Don Applegate, Basin Electric director since 1997, representing District 4, Northwest Iowa Power Cooperative (NIPCO).

The Omaha World-Herald featured Collin’s story in their Sunday paper, Jan. 15, 2012.

The story online contains pictures and video: Amputee goes to the mat for comeback

Here is an excerpt from the story written by Kevin White, staff writer at the World-Herald.

Oct. 8 was like most fall Saturdays on the Applegates’ 2,500-acre farm three miles west and one mile north of Oakland, a city of about 1,500 that is 30 miles east of Omaha. There was work to be done, and Collin was in the middle of it.

A few miles away, at a farm the family rents, Collin and a friend were hooking up a manure wagon to move it back home. Collin was between the tractor and the wagon when the tractor rolled back, crushing his lower left leg between the tractor hitch and the pump.

The boys immediately called for help on their cellphones. Collin’s friend used his lifeguard training, telling Collin to take off his shirt and wrap it around the leg to slow the bleeding. He reassured Collin and remained on the line with 911 while waiting for an ambulance. Read more.

Sunrise at Deer Creek Station on Dec. 21, 2011.

In December, construction at Deer Creek Station was 85 percent complete.

Gavin McCollam, project manager on Deer Creek Station, says, “Most of the major mechanical is all done, a lot of the piping is done, and now the big push is the electrical and controls.” Watch the video.

Construction started in July 2010. On the inside of the plant, major mechanical work is finished. The turbines and generators were placed on their pedestals in August 2011. The stack was topped out in August, too.

The air cooled condenser is almost complete. The wind walls are going up, some of the last pieces to put in place. In mid-December, the electrical system reached backfeed, meaning electricity was successful fed from the transmission grid back to the plant.

“As you can see, they’ve pretty much finished the shell of the plant, the outside, it looks now, when you drive by, pretty much the way it’s gonna look when it’s done. It looks nice.”

In February, contractor Boldt Construction will turn the plant over to Basin Electric for commissioning. Later this spring, the plan is to fire the gas turbine for the first time. McCollam says there are 400 contract workers still on site, and about 25 Basin Electric operations employees.

A 400-ton crane lifts the Philip transformer onto its new pad at the Watford City Substation.

Oh, if this transformer could talk, the stories it would tell. The 172,000-pound transformer from Western Area Power Administration‘s Philip, SD, substation traveled nearly 1,000 miles to reach its final destination at Western’s substation near Watford City, ND, on Jan. 11.

A quick look at any map can tell a person it’s not a 1,000-mile journey between Philip and Watford City, but circumstances required a sizable detour through Baker and Roundup, MT, to avoid oil field traffic and soft roads.

Dwight Barth, Basin Electric logistics/contract administrator, arranged the complicated logistics for the transport of the 230/115-kilovolt transformer. He’s moved bigger things over longer distances, but this one posed special challenges. Watch the video to hear him describe them.

Bryan Keller, Basin Electric manager of Transmission System Maintenance (TSM), says the transformer was removed from its pad at Philip in September 2011. It was stored until it was time to make the trip to North Dakota.

Lee Holden, Basin Electric substation superintendent, coordinated the transformer move from the TSM side. Western will use the transformer to serve load at Watford City when their upgraded Charlie Creek-to-Williston transmission line begins operation at 230 kilovolts later this spring.

Philip Substation’s new transformer is having an interesting journey of its own. It’s been delayed at the factory and should be delivered by the end of March. In the meantime, Philip is transformerless, and power is being rerouted.

Basin Electric and Western have a long history of working together through their partnership in the Integrated System. Learn more about this powerful partnership.

Welcome to Patrick Hurt’s office. He’s the lead wind technician at the PrairieWinds ND 1 facilities south of Minot, ND. He and his fellow techs inarguably have the best views in the cooperative.

Hurt’s days are busy. Between troubleshooting, working with contractors and doing maintenance, it’s a lot to get done. North Dakota’s climate affects what gets done from day to day. On extremely cold days, some equipment in the turbines simply cannot operate. And wind chills can be dangerous for technicians. But fighting through the frigid weather is worth it for the reward of the good days, he says.

Watch the video to get a feel for a day in the life of a wind turbine technician.

Be sure to pick up a copy the January/February 2012 issue of Basin Today magazine and look for a feature on Patrick Hurt and the work he does for one of the nation’s largest wind projects owned solely by a cooperative.

Ronald McDonald Care Mobile.

The Ronald McDonald Care Mobile will help take care of dental problems for low-income children in western North Dakota. It is a dentist’s office on wheels. It arrived in Bismarck Jan. 4, and will be ready to treat children by February.

When children suffer from dental problems, their trouble isn’t limited to their teeth. Studies show that even minor dental problems can cause children to do worse in school and end up with large emergency room bills when left untreated.

The Ronald McDonald House identifies the schools in greatest need by using the North Dakota Public Schools System free/reduced lunch program statistics. This identifies the percentage of low-income students as candidates for this dental service.

Basin Electric, along with Touchstone Energy Cooperatives® Roughrider Electric, Slope Electric and KEM Electric, has sponsored the Care Mobile.

An official launch and donor reception is scheduled for Jan. 26. We hope to bring you more on the Care Mobile then!

A view of the room at Mitt Romney's caucus reception.

Dale Niezwaag, Basin Electric senior legislative representative, traveled to Iowa for the 2012 Iowa caucuses Jan. 3.

Here is Niezwaag’s account:
I found the Iowa caucus experience very interesting. I was lucky enough to have a behind-the-scenes tour from a resident expert, Tim Coonan from the Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives. We started off by stopping at the campaign headquarters of Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry.

At Mitt Romney’s headquarters (an empty Blockbuster Video store) there was buzz of noise as approximately 30 people with lists in front of them were making calls to prospective caucus-goers encouraging them to vote for Mitt. Most of the crowd was under 30 years old and there was a table full of Taco John’s 12-pack taco bags, to either keep them going or ruin their health.

At Michelle Bachmann’s headquarters (an empty office building), we found a different scene: a fairly quiet room with about eight people sitting around a table, mainly talking to each other. Boxes of fliers and handouts crowded the hallways.

At Rick Perry’s headquarters (a very nice conference room in an upscale hotel) everyone was gone, on their way to the actual caucus events.

Tim and I then headed for his caucus meeting, which was held in the upstairs of a neighborhood church. People registered as they entered the caucus room, showing driver’s licenses as proof of where they lived. Approximately 100 voters milled around talking to each other. Also in the room were three people with video cameras, two people with still cameras, and reporters to go along with each.

At 7 p.m. the caucus chair called the meeting to order and allowed one person to speak on behalf of their candidate for a maximum of 5 minutes. If the campaign didn’t have an official representative of the campaign at the meeting, a local supporter could stand up and speak on behalf of the candidate. In Rick Perry’s case, a person from Texas spoke. (I found out later that Perry had flown in hundreds of people to speak on his behalf at the caucuses.) In most other cases a local supporter spoke, and in some cases, Bachmann and Santorum, no one spoke.

After the speeches, the caucus chair told everyone to write the name of their candidate on the slip of paper they were given when they entered the room. Then he personally collected the slips, and with the help of a caucus secretary, counted the ballots and announced the totals. The entire process took approximately 45 minutes.

We then went to Mitt Romney’s reception room, which was in an upscale downtown hotel. As we walked in, I was struck by the number of cameras and reporters in the room. At one end were three tiers of risers filled with lights and television production-style cameras. At the same time I noticed a young man in a suit with a large microphone. He was standing in the light provided by one of the TV cameras. His big microphone was plugged into an iPhone and his assistant or girlfriend was recording his performance.

We went to another room to watch the results. By 10 p.m., almost all the results were in. But the tally stopped at 99 percent of the counties reporting, and Rick Santorum up by only four votes. By 1 a.m. they were still stuck at 99 percent.

As reported the next morning, the caucus chairman from Clinton, IA, who presided over a caucus of 60 voters, sent her votes in but they were not received. So people were sent to her house at 1:30 a.m. to wake her up and get the final vote counts, which gave Romney the win by eight votes.

Large bank of television cameras at Romney reception.

Here are the top 10 blog posts as tabulated by WordPress, our blogging platform:

Damaged wind turbine blades in PrairieWinds ND 1 projects. (May 2011)

2. Aerial video of Garrison Dam releases at more than 103,000 cubic feet per second

3. More pictures: Garrison Dam flows continue to increase

4. Basin Electric employees leave their homes due to flood along Missouri River

5. Through a photographer’s eyes: Laramie River Footsteps

6. Flood waters on the way to Bismarck, Mandan

7. Rainbow finds gold at Dry Fork Station

8. Basin Electric Director Wayne Child goes bald for St. Baldrick’s

9. Leland Olds Station employee finds dad in video

10. Basin Electric’s payroll supervisor talks about flood in his neighborhood