Dive Brief:

• The Southwest Power Pool has expanded its membership to 90, adding four new members to the regional transmission organization.
• The new additions include three cooperatives and one investor owned utility, the largest serving almost 700,000 customers across three states.
• SPP was brief in its announcement, not even requiring all 140 characters on Twitter to spread the news.

Dive Insight:

East River Electric is a wholesale electric power supply cooperative serving 24 rural electric cooperatives and one municipally-owned electric system, according to its website. In turn, those providers serve more than 92,000 homes and businesses and about 250,000 consumers. East River has a 40,000 square-mile service territory with customers in South Dakota and Minnesota.

Northwest Iowa Power Cooperative (NIPCO) is a generation and transmission electric cooperative supplying wholesale electric power to 7 distribution cooperatives that serve over 30,000 members. The cooperative has more than 900 miles of 69kV transmission line and 80 distribution substations.

Corn Belt Power Cooperative is a generation and transmission electric cooperative supplying electricity to nine member cooperatives and one municipal cooperative.

NorthWestern Energy, the only investor-owned utility of the bunch, serves about 416,000 customers and owns a generation fleet that includes wind, hydro, natural gas and coal-fired resources. The company also owns and operates natural gas production, transmission and distribution systems serving 276,500 customers.