More power pathways up north

Imagine the frustration of road construction. Now, imagine the frustration of road construction – with little possibility for detours. As a driver, you simply have no way of getting to your destination.

This was the issue challenging Minnkota Power Cooperative’s power system operators when it came time for line or substation maintenance work in its northwest Minnesota service territory. If infrastructure had to be deenergized, there was often no easy solution for rerouting power to keep electricity flowing to homes and businesses in the area.

In February 2025, Minnkota put the finishing touches on a long-term set of projects to reduce those outage restraints and enhance power reliability in the region. Working together with Otter Tail Power Company, the cooperative constructed a new 230/115-kilovolt (kV) substation, named Lake Ardoch, north of Grand Forks, North Dakota.

“With adding Lake Ardoch, effectively we're tying into the Prairie substation and the Drayton substation, which are two of the strongest substations on our system,” explained Matthew Foster, Minnkota substation engineer.  “Adding another source into this northwest Minnesota area is going to improve reliability drastically.”

In addition to the new substation, Minnkota’s Winger 230/115-kV substation in rural Polk County, Minnesota, was expanded to accommodate a second transformer for Otter Tail Power. As a final piece of the project, Otter Tail Power constructed a transmission line from the new Lake Ardoch substation to its new Olso breaker station. Through a cost-sharing agreement, Minnkota owns 25% of the line and 50% of the new facilities.

The technical aspects of this set of projects may sound confusing to the outside observer, but the outcome is simple: All this shared infrastructure will further boost reliability for those served by both utilities and provide additional room for future load growth in the area.

“From a high level down, I think we can already see advantages and some of that reliability come through,” said Minnkota Substation Engineering Manager Ryan Brorby. “I've heard that from our system operators as well.”

According to Will Lovelace, Minnkota Engineering Supervisor of Power Delivery Planning, the journey toward these northwest Minnesota updates started more than a decade ago following a regional high-voltage analysis completed by Otter Tail Power. Through such analyses, utilities can model different kinds of stressed system conditions to see how their infrastructure would respond to certain line or facility outages. Or, for example, if load was anticipated to grow quickly due to several new commercial businesses in a community, the analysis would reveal where additional power infrastructure may be needed.

Since the electrical systems of Otter Tail Power and Minnkota intertwine in many areas, the two had to work together to develop reliability-reinforcing updates based on the analysis that would be mutually beneficial to end-use consumers of both utilities.

“Transmission planning is very collaborative,” Lovelace said. “We have good relationships with other planners in the area, and there’s not a bright-line rule on who leads what project. Especially in this region where we have such mixed ownership.”

Construction on the Winger substation expansion and Lake Ardoch began in 2023 and 2024, respectively, with both ready to take load in the following year. Although the timeline for these projects changed along the way, shifting due to later material arrivals and overlapping utility schedules, Minnkota was grateful to have a team on the ground that remained flexible and driven to better serve northwest Minnesota.

“We have crews that are willing to accommodate needs. They know when a project needs to be done, they’re going to help us out,” Foster said, Brorby nodding by his side. “Without them, this doesn't happen.”

MAIN IMAGE: Substation Engineer Matthew Foster stands before the new Lake Ardoch substation. (Minnkota/Michael Hoeft)