Lake Country Power is near completion on a line buildout to service the Cohasset Industrial Park that is expected to boost the area’s economic development prospects.
The project spans about 3 miles of overhead lines and 1 mile of underground, and will increase the park’s capacity to 7 megawatts (MW), while providing more reliability and resiliency. The increased capacity also positions Cohasset to attract more industrial business opportunities, which in turn could benefit the local economy through job growth and increased tax base.
Prior to the buildout, the industrial park had only 1MW of spare capacity with the existing businesses, which limited its ability to attract companies that were looking for more capacity that was immediately available. The missed opportunities provided Lake Country Power the opening to take a second look at the co-op’s service to the area.
“Lake Country Power has a pretty conservative and good tradition here of only investing as much as we need to and growing with our infrastructure,” said Dan Cooper, key accounts and business development manager at LCP. “In the last three to five years we’ve had a lot more demand for larger loads, shorter timelines. Everyone wants it and they want it now, and we kind of see that trend continuing here.”
What Cooper called a “shared challenge” among the project’s partners also played a factor in moving ahead with the project. Northeastern Minnesota, especially in the West Range and Iron Range regions, are pushing for economic diversity to better support the overall health of local communities.
For LCP, it falls under the seven cooperative principles it operates under is the Concern for Community that supports members and local communities through sustainable development through policies and programs.
“We didn't have the power capacity to be shovel ready, and anybody working on economic growth knows that now,” said Mark Bakk, general manager of LCP. “So this is a huge opportunity for us to actually be there right when somebody knocks on the door. The hold up won't be us.”
To build out the capacity and the lines, the LCP engineering team adopted new standards to work with a new style of wire. The 477 Pelican wire was never used by LCP prior to the industrial park, which meant new tools, connectors and more needed to be purchased.
The estimated cost of the project was $3 million but finished around $1 million with the new standards. Partnering with LCP on the costs were the city of Cohasset, Itasca County and the Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation.
“We’re really appreciative of these groups for partnering with us and saying that we’re here together to help our communities,” Cooper said.