If Governor Larry Rhoden really wants spend money on “strengthening our critical infrastructure” and “improving resilience”, maybe he should take his half-million misappropriation back from his gritty task force and spend that money and more on giving South Dakotans solar panels and batteries to ride out power outages.
The city of Ann Arbor, Michigan is doing just that via the Sustainable Energy Utility its residents voted for:
Electric utilities have been facing all kinds of problems recently. Data centers are gobbling up every megawatt-hour they can, rates are up, and extreme weather is causing reliability issues.
“About a year ago, we had a blackout here, and I lost a freezer full of meat and a refrigerator full of meat,” [resident Bruce] Schauer said.
The solution to a lot of those problems is what’s known as local power. Solar panels and batteries, for instance, can reduce demand on the grid, produce electricity cheaply, and they can supply power when the grid can’t.
The downside is that installing those solutions can cost consumers tens of thousands of dollars. That’s why the City of Ann Arbor has started installing solar panels and batteries for free.
“Having the power actually produced in our community is really valuable for resiliency,” said Shoshannah Lenski, the utility’s executive director.
This utility doesn’t replace the giant electric company that serves the city. It’s supplemental, and right now it’s funded by government grants and the city budget. In addition to solar panels and a battery, residents who need insulation or a new roof get that too — also for free [Caleigh Wells, “Free Solar Panels and Home Batteries? Ann Arbor’s Trying It Out,” Marketplace, 2026.08.14.
This decentralized power infrastructure benefits both residents who take advantage of the offer and the community at large:
…residents don’t own the panels or the batteries; they just pay a monthly fee for the privilege of having them.
“It’s like any other utility. We own the generating assets, and residents buy the power or the service and the benefits of it,” Lenski said.
And if there’s, say, a massive heatwave, the utility can pull energy from your battery to lighten the load on the grid and prevent an outage.
Lenski said this costs households about $600 per year. But it cuts electric bills by $700-$1,000 per year [Wells, 2026.08.14].
Instead of handing economic development/resiliency dollars to his cronies at the top, Governor Rhoden should refocus his attention on grassroots investments that directly help regular South Dakotans and have trickle-up benefits for everyone on the grid.
Related Reading:
- Brits are putting up more solar panels to escape the higher fossil-fuel prices brought to them by Trump’s war on Iran.
- “Around one-third of Australian houses now host solar arrays — the highest proportion in the world — and together they produce around 10% of the country’s power,” thanks to federal subsidies. Australia is now expanding those subsidies to include businesses.
- A Colorado farmer planted 3,276 solar panels that produce power he sells to his local utility company and shade that protects his flax and clary sage from withering heat.