Central Wisconsin Electric Cooperative (CWEC) has been awarded almost $1.3 million in grants as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, also known as the bipartisan infrastructure law.
CWEC had originally applied for the grants in February 2024, and was previously notified that it would be awarded the two grants. With the change in presidential administrations, though, there was a delay in the final awarding of the grants, as the new administration reviewed all grant expenditures.
The funds from the two grants will be used on two projects.
A grant award of $405,339 will be used to convert 2.5 miles of overhead power lines to a three-phase underground line along Fairview Road in the towns of Bartelme and Almon in Shawano County. This line feeds the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans.
By converting this line from overhead to underground, it will help make the infrastructure more resilient to natural hazards. Kevin Kurtzweil, vice president of operations for CWEC, said that burying the power line will help prevent long power outages in the Stockbridge-Munsee area like the long outage in 2022 after a tornado hit the area.
“It’s an aged three-phase (line) that feeds into Stockbridge-Munsee,” Kurtzweil said. “That being the only feed, chances are, if it’s underground, we’re not going to lose power off of it as often.
“When you have busted poles and wires down everywhere, the restoration process just takes forever. Underground is a lot better, and the new cable is predicted to last 60-70 years.”
With trees and the forest playing a crucial role in the culture of the Stockbridge-Munsee, CWEC President and CEO Lila Shower said having the power line underground will eliminate the need to remove trees from that 2.5-mile stretch.
Not having to do vegetation management will also save the co-op money. On average, it costs the co-op $4,500 per mile to have vegetation management done.
A grant award for $887,666 will be used to provide a tie-in between CWEC’s Wittenberg and Groenier substations. The tie-in will give the co-op another tie-in option, as well as the opportunity to back feed electricity. This will mean less time co-op members serviced by those substations will be out of power when there are power outages.
According to the grant stipulations, the two projects must be completed within two years. CWEC is currently in the process of ordering materials for the projects, as that could not begin until the awarding of the grants was finalized. Another stipulation of the grant is all materials used must be made in America. Work on the two projects will begin when materials are received, but supply issues could factor into that.
The total cost of the two projects is almost $2 million. The grants will fund almost $1.3 million of the projects, and CWEC will supply around $650,000 to cover the remainder of the costs for the two projects.
“Without the grants, we would not be able to do these two projects,” Shower said. “We’re not an investor owned utility. They have people who buy stock, and they can plow money into projects like this. We can’t do that, because we service the rural area. We have five people per mile of line, and investor owned utilities have 35 people per mile of line, so they can get more money to do these types of projects.”
Categories
