Securing The Energy Needs For Tomorrow And Beyond

Blooming Prairie Public Utilities was formed after the voters approved an initiative put to them by the City Council on Thursday November 6, 1930. The vote was motivated by the substandard service being provided by Interstate Power, a "For Profit" Utility Company, voters wanted to have control over this vital infrastructure in their own communities and ensure its proper operation and reliability. The vote passed with 435(Yes) and 88(No). Since than BPPU has seen significant growth in both Load and Generation, in 1969 BPPU’s peak load was 1,280,000 Watts of Demand with a total annual purchase of 6,684,000,000-Watt Hours of Energy. In 2020 BPPU Peaked at 5,496,000 Watts of Demand with 25,853,287,000-Watt Hours of Energy, that’s an increase of energy delivered to the community of 4 times that of 41 years ago. BPPU has also  increased generating resources owned and operated by BPPU from 600,000 Watts in 1929 to 6,400,000 Watts today, that asset helps prevent the community from experiencing long duration outages from weather events as well as helping keeps rates lower by contracting out that capacity to our energy partner SMMPA.  The Utilities also manages the Water System and one of the first thing they did was upgraded the wells in 1941 from shallow, unproductive and contaminated sources to 2-250 foot deep wells tapping into Maquoketa-Dubuque Aquifer system and is capable of delivering over 300 gallons a minuet each.     

BPPU is also a founding member of Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (SMMPA), SMMPA is a not-for-profit joint-action agency formed in 1977 during a time of increasing demand for electricity. Member utilities united through joint action and rallied behind their shared purpose of securing a long-term energy solution. By using the collective strength of SMMPA, Blooming Prairie Public Utilities was able to invest in a long-term source of reliable and affordable power – Sherco 3.

Today, joint action is still a timeless solution for managing the challenges of a complex and dynamic industry. We’re diversifying our energy mix by adding clean burning natural-gas generation and renewable sources like the wind and solar. We’re strengthening the electric grid that delivers energy to homes, businesses and industry. And we’re helping customers find ways to understand, manage and reduce their energy use while still maintain that local control over their system and rates.

BPPU is regulated by a 3-person commission of whom is appointed by the City Council.   The Commission is responsible for setting rates so that they remain as close to actual costs as possible with only direct operating expenses added on to the Whole Sales Cost while still maintaining the system reliability.  Each year BPPU records outages and participates in national outage reporting, per our Benchmarking Report BPPU scored 99.9952% service availability in 2020 and scored in the top 1 percentile for the Midwest.  BPPU continues to move forward with implementation of new Automated Metering Infrastructure for water and electric as well as modernizing its Mapping and Billing system.  If you have any questions feel free to call us at (507) 583-6683 or stop in.