At the End of the Energy Chain
While powerful industries consume more electricity to expand, families on Rosebud are paying more for the power they need to survive.
In Part One of this series, Red Cloud Renewable followed Rosebud’s electricity hundreds of miles upstream.
We found a regional power system undergoing billions of dollars in expansion as oil and gas development, manufacturing, ethanol production and other large commercial operations demand more energy. Basin Electric is investing heavily in the power plants and transmission infrastructure needed to meet that growth.
Those investments are among the pressures increasing wholesale electricity costs. Those costs travel down the energy chain through Rushmore Electric and Cherry Todd Electric Cooperative before reaching families on the Rosebud Reservation.
At one end of that chain are powerful industries using enormous amounts of electricity to expand production and generate revenue. At the other end is someone like Ivette, a Rosebud community member and single mother of three, reorganizing her household budget to keep the electricity on.
“I have had to cut back on groceries, personal hygiene products and extra spending for my children in order to cover household expenses,” she said.
This is what rising energy costs look like after they leave the financial reports, construction plans and distant industrial projects behind.
They arrive inside a family’s home.
When Electricity Competes With Necessities
Ivette has received multiple notices from Cherry Todd about rate increases over the years. The most recent announced an average residential increase of approximately 8.8 percent beginning in January 2026.
A percentage printed on a notice may not appear devastating by itself. Inside a household already carefully dividing its income among groceries, gas, children’s needs and monthly bills, however, it can force painful decisions.
“I have had to reorganize my budget many times to keep the electricity on,” Ivette said. “It is difficult when something as basic as keeping the lights, heat or refrigerator running competes with other necessities.”
She is not alone.
Ivette has seen community members borrow money because they were trying to pay their electric bills. She has heard elders living on fixed incomes talk about how difficult those bills can be to manage and watched people turn to tribal assistance programs for help.
Families and neighbors step in when someone is struggling. That willingness to help one another is a strength within the community, but it also reveals how much pressure energy costs are placing on people who have the least room in their budgets to absorb another increase.
Many of those households may already be conserving as much as they can. An elder can turn off lights and unplug appliances. A parent can lower the thermostat and carefully watch the family’s electricity use.
None of those choices can protect them from an increase in the price itself.
Electricity Is Not Optional
Inside Ivette’s household, electricity does far more than keep the lights on. It keeps necessary medication refrigerated. It charges a mobility scooter battery. During allergy and cold season, it powers a nebulizer. In winter, it keeps the home safe.
Ivette learned how quickly a household can become vulnerable when her family lost power for approximately two days during a severe winter storm. They were living in a small trailer in Mission when the electrical lines froze and the family became snowed in.
“I remember layering blankets along the walls and keeping everyone in one room so we could retain as much heat as possible,” she recalled.
Before the storm, Ivette had purchased food that would not require cooking because she knew they might lose power. Her family gathered together, conserved warmth and waited for the electricity to return.
“That experience stayed with me because I realized how quickly a normal household can become vulnerable when electricity isn’t available, especially during a South Dakota winter.”
For a large industrial operation, electricity is a business expense. Greater energy use can support greater production and greater profits. For families like Ivette’s, electricity preserves food and medicine. It powers necessary medical equipment. It protects children and elders from dangerous temperatures.
Families cannot simply stop purchasing it when the price rises.
Who Benefits, and Who Pays?
Rosebud families did not create the industrial growth taking place hundreds of miles away.
They did not decide how rapidly the Bakken oil producing region should expand. They did not approve new power plants or determine how billions of dollars in construction should be financed. Most will never receive a share of the profits produced by the industries creating some of this enormous demand.
Yet they live at the very bottom of the energy chain, where rising costs eventually arrive.
Industrial growth is not the only reason electricity rates have increased. Fuel prices, maintenance, reliability requirements and other expenses also affect the final cost. Basin’s records do not tell us that a specific portion of a Rosebud family’s bill paid for a particular power plant.
But Basin has identified growing demand and the infrastructure needed to serve it among the pressures increasing its costs. Those costs move through the regional power system until Cherry Todd must recover the expense of purchasing and delivering electricity from its members.
That raises a question that should matter to all of us.
Why should families struggling to afford groceries, medicine and basic household necessities help carry the cost of a growing regional power system when so much of that growth benefits industries somewhere else?
At the end of every rate increase is a real household forced to make room for a bill it cannot choose to stop paying.
Learning Another Way
Ivette knows she cannot control the decisions being made by distant industries or regional power providers.
What she can do is learn how to give her family and community another option.
Before enrolling in Red Cloud Renewable’s solar training, Ivette had already begun researching ways to create a more sustainable and energy independent future for her family. She believed solar could help lower household energy costs while also providing greater security during outages.
A system connected to the electrical grid could reduce the amount of electricity a household must purchase each month. Battery storage could provide another layer of protection when severe weather damages infrastructure and the grid becomes unavailable.
The possibilities interested Ivette, but the terminology and technology were difficult to understand on her own. Red Cloud Renewable’s training began turning that interest into practical knowledge. Her first goal is to use what she learns to create a more sustainable home for her own family. After that, she wants to help other Rosebud community members understand their options and find solutions that fit their homes and needs.
“I don’t just want to learn this for myself,” she said. “I want to be able to take the knowledge back into the community.”
Knowledge That Comes Home
Red Cloud Renewable is based on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but the people of Rosebud are our Sicangu Lakota relatives to the east. The struggles affecting their homes, elders and children matter to us.
Providing one Native person with professional solar training will not erase every rate increase or dismantle the unfairness built into a massive regional energy system.
But that knowledge can travel.
It can help one mother build a more secure future for her children. It can help families understand their energy options. It can prepare community members to reduce their dependence on increasingly expensive electricity and protect their homes when the power goes out.
It can also create local professionals who understand the community because they are part of it.
“When you invest in a student like me, you are not just helping one person learn about solar energy,” Ivette said. “You are helping create someone who can take that knowledge home and share it with other families.”
Powerful industries already have the money, influence and technical knowledge needed to shape the regional energy system around their growth.
Families at the end of that system deserve knowledge and power of their own.
Ivette is determined to bring both home.
