At Todd-Wadena Electric Cooperative, we often hear thoughtful questions from members about how electricity makes its way to their homes and businesses—and what we can do to improve reliability. Recently, a member asked:
“How does power get to my home? Why are there power lines on both sides of the road? At what point do we get to a grid where each home has two distribution paths to power their homes?”
From the Power Plant to Your Plug
Electricity is generated at power plants—whether from solar, natural gas, coal, wind, or other sources. That electricity travels over long distances using transmission lines. These lines can be the large metal structures you see along I-94, or they can be smaller-looking structures that still carry a much higher voltage than our distribution lines.
Transmission lines deliver power to transmission substations, where voltage is lowered before it’s sent to distribution cooperatives like Todd-Wadena Electric. At our local substations, we step the voltage down again (to 7,200 volts) so it’s ready to travel on our distribution lines to homes and businesses. From there, the power flows through single-phase (two wires) or three-phase (four wires) systems, depending on the needs of the area served.
Why Power Lines Are on Both Sides of the Road
If you see power lines running down both sides of a road, one is often a distribution line (ours) carrying electricity directly from the substation to members. The other is likely a transmission line owned by another utility, such as Minnesota Power or Great River Energy. The picture below shows how similar distribution and transmission lines can look. When outages occur on a transmission line, we must wait for the owner to restore service before we can begin work locally.
Why Not Build Two Distribution Paths?
While having multiple distribution paths for every home would improve redundancy, it would also be extremely costly. Building additional lines to serve our 9,000+ member services would require significant rate increases, along with navigating permitting, easements, and land access challenges. In addition to that, if there is a transmission outage, it would not matter how many lines we have running to a home. If our substation has no power due to transmission, all lines would be out of power.
Our Commitment to Reliability
We understand outages are frustrating. While some are beyond our control—especially those caused by upstream transmission issues—we’re proud to have fewer outages than many other distribution systems in the state. Each year, we invest in projects to strengthen and maintain our system, balancing both reliability and affordability for our members.
