“It’s complicated.”
Far too often, topics of great importance are inadequately explained and packaged into short soundbites and character-limited social media posts. The information delivered is often void of the context needed to gain understanding.
Avoiding the complicated is not our style at North Dakota Living. We seek to be thorough, accurate, complete and transparent. It’s how we’ve built trust with our readers and electric cooperative members over more than 70 years. And, it’s working: “Reliable” and “trusted” were the top words readers used to describe their view of North Dakota Living.
This issue concludes North Dakota Living’s four-part Cost of Your Power series, which examines how industry pressures may impact the price you pay for electricity. Many aspects of the electric industry were covered in the series, including the rising cost of materials, supply chain and inflationary impacts, wholesale power and power markets, and the delicate balance of building generation and transmission to meet peak demand. The written content is accompanied by helpful infographics and visuals explaining how the grid works, electric material cost increases and what’s impacting the supply and demand of electricity today.
If you missed a story or want to revisit a specific topic, the entire Cost of Your Power series can be accessed on our website, ndliving.com.
Thanks to our editor, Cally Peterson, for her extensive research and work put into the series. Her desire to go to the source to further break down and explain the complexities of the electric industry, then translate it into a readable and digestible composition, should be commended.
I also want to thank those expert sources who contributed to the Cost of Your Power series.
And to our readers who took the time to read the series: thank you. You are inquisitive. You prioritize learning. You expect more.
Many times, I’ve raised a brow at questions posed without context (mostly on social media), seemingly done to trigger a response. I’ve seen pointed questions directed at electric cooperatives, which I know could and would be eagerly answered by a call to an electric cooperative employee or director. Sometimes, the explanations could be learned by using North Dakota Living as the resource it’s intended to be.
To my delight, many of these challenging questions are answered organically by well-informed, tolerant, insightful electric cooperative members (who I assume are North Dakota Living readers). A cooperative is only as strong as the members who own it, and I’m assured often of the strength of North Dakota’s electric cooperatives.
Lastly, let me reaffirm the commitment and dedication electric cooperatives have to safe, affordable and reliable electricity. Providing exceptional service and maintaining affordability is the end goal. We hope the Cost of Your Power series pushed beyond the “it’s complicated,” provided context and explained the factors weighed when determining rates and balancing reliability, safety and affordability.
___
Josh Kramer, editor-in-chief of North Dakota Living, is executive vice president and general manager of NDAREC. Contact him at jkramer@ndarec.com.
