Rosebud Families Are Paying More for Power. The Reason Begins Hundreds of Miles Away.
As industrial demand grows across the region, families on the Rosebud Reservation are being asked to pay more for an essential service they cannot live without.
A family on the Rosebud Reservation does not need to build a factory, open an oil field or fill a warehouse with computers to feel the cost of industrial expansion.
It can arrive quietly, folded into the electric bill.
The household may not be using more electricity than it did before. An elder may carefully turn off lights and unplug appliances. A parent may lower the thermostat and watch every kilowatt-hour. But conserving electricity cannot protect a family from an increase in the price itself.
In April 2025, Cherry-Todd Electric Cooperative implemented an approximately 2% rate increase. Then, in January 2026, residential members experienced another average increase of approximately 8.8%. Compounded together, that represents an increase of nearly 11% in less than two years.
For families already dividing limited income among groceries, transportation, medicine, heat and electricity, even a seemingly modest increase can carry a serious cost.
Red Cloud Renewable is based on the Pine Ridge Reservation, but the people of Rosebud are not strangers to us. They are our Sicangu Lakota relatives to the east, and the struggles affecting their homes, elders and children matter to us.
Following the Cost Upstream
Cherry-Todd is the local, member-owned cooperative delivering electricity to much of Rosebud. However, it does not generate most of that electricity itself.
Cherry-Todd purchases wholesale power through Rushmore Electric Power Cooperative. Rushmore receives power through larger suppliers, principally Basin Electric Power Cooperative and the federal Western Area Power Administration.
The chain looks like this:
Basin Electric and federal hydropower → Rushmore Electric → Cherry-Todd → Rosebud households
When costs increase higher in that chain, they can eventually reach the families at the end of it.
Basin increased its average wholesale rate by approximately 6.5% at the beginning of 2025. One year later, it implemented another increase of approximately 10%.
Basin has identified several reasons for these increases, including changing commodity prices, reduced surplus electricity sales, higher power-reserve requirements and investments in reliability. But one factor appears repeatedly in its announcements and financial records: growing regional demand and the cost of building enough generation and transmission infrastructure to meet it.
Billions in New Construction
At the end of 2025, Basin reported approximately $5.8 billion in outstanding debt. From 2026 through 2030, it plans to spend approximately $7.1 billion on its electric system.
That includes more than $4 billion for new electric generation and approximately $2.1 billion for new transmission.
One of the projects included in that plan is the Bison Generation Station near Epping, North Dakota. The nearly $4 billion natural-gas plant is expected to produce approximately 1,470 megawatts of electricity.
Basin also completed an approximately $805 million expansion of the Pioneer Generation Station northwest of Williston in 2025. It added roughly 580 megawatts of natural-gas generation to help address growth and grid limitations in the Bakken region.
These projects are not being built because Rosebud families suddenly began leaving more lights on.
Basin says growth across its system is coming from agriculture, oil and gas, ethanol, manufacturing, residential development and other commercial activity. Its financial filing says the amount of electricity it supplied to members grew at an average compounded rate of 5.5% annually between 2020 and 2025, driven in large part by growth in the Bakken oil-producing region of western North Dakota and eastern Montana.
Basin has also reported requests for enormous amounts of electricity from cryptocurrency operations, artificial-intelligence projects and data centers. It adopted a special program in 2025 that it says will require qualifying large-load customers to bear the cost of the infrastructure built specifically for them.
That safeguard matters. It shows that Basin recognizes a basic principle: existing cooperative members should not be left paying for infrastructure constructed to serve enormous new customers.
But Basin’s regular growth category still includes major commercial and industrial sectors such as oil and gas, ethanol and manufacturing. Basin has connected that growth to increased construction spending—and identified load growth and infrastructure investment among the pressures behind its wholesale rate increases.
They Use More. Families Pay More.
For an expanding industrial operation, electricity is part of the cost of doing business. More energy can mean more production, processing and revenue.
For a Rosebud family, electricity keeps the home warm during a South Dakota winter. It preserves food and medication. It powers lights, water systems, phones and essential medical equipment.
It is not optional.
Rosebud residents did not decide how rapidly the Bakken should expand. They did not approve Basin’s power plants, choose its construction schedule or negotiate billions of dollars in financing. Yet they live at the end of a power-supply chain through which growing regional costs can travel.
Basin’s records do not tell us that a specific number of dollars from each Rosebud bill paid for a particular North Dakota power plant. Industrial growth is also not the only reason rates increased. Weather, fuel, maintenance, federal hydropower costs and local distribution expenses all affect the final price.
But the connection is real: Basin is spending billions to meet existing needs and projected growth. Basin says growth-related investments are among the factors pushing its rates higher. Rushmore purchases electricity from Basin and supplies Cherry-Todd. Cherry-Todd must then recover the cost of purchasing and delivering electricity from its members.
At the very end of that chain is a family opening a higher bill.
The question is not whether the electrical grid needs investment. The question is who should carry its cost.
Should an elder who uses very little electricity pay more as industries expand elsewhere? Should a low-income family on Rosebud help finance regional economic growth from which it may receive little direct benefit? Are the industries creating the greatest new demands carrying a fair share of the cost?
Behind every percentage is a real household forced to make room for a bill it cannot choose to stop paying.
In Part Two, a Rosebud community member will share what rising electricity costs look like inside an actual home—the choices families face, the people she worries about and why she believes her community needs a more affordable and independent energy future.
