The World Wide Web turns 25 this year. Think about how different the world is now than it was 25 years ago. Massive technological innovations are now a daily occurrence, rapidly changing and affecting how we work, how we learn, how we play, and how we communicate. As your Public Utilities Commissioner, I understand that […]
Welcome to my farm. I grew up here. I learned the value of hard work here. I saw first-hand how taking care of the land is important for next year’s crop and imperative when thinking and planning how that land is preserved for the next generation. My father demonstrated that for me. He taught me […]
I often say when I speak to groups that 99 out of 100 South Dakotans probably can’t explain what the Public Utilities Commission does. That elicits a chuckle from the audience indicating I’m pretty close to accurate with that number. That doesn’t mean folks don’t pay attention to state government but rather that the role […]
The following article was published on-line by Daily Energy Insider on August 22, 2016 by Tracy Rozens: The rising number of rate cases being submitted to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in recent years is mainly the result of an increase in capital spending by utility companies trying to reduce the environmental impact […]
One of my priorities as a public utilities commissioner has been to close the broadband gap in South Dakota. It’s commonly called the rural/rural divide. Citizens in portions of our state enjoy world class broadband while their neighbors living on the other side of a gravel road may have no internet access of any kind. […]
As a public utilities commissioner I am a member of a national association of my counterparts from around the country called the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners or NARUC. In 2013 our national president appointed me chairman of the association’s Committee on Telecommunications. The chairmanship involves the typical responsibilities of organizing biweekly conference calls […]
One doesn’t have to travel very far in rural South Dakota during the month of July to find the countryside abuzz with combines, grain carts, and trucks bringing in the wheat harvest. In fact South Dakota ranks sixth for wheat production in the United States. What does the wheat harvest have to do with the […]
Just months after I became a PUC commissioner while attending an event in Custer, a man approached me with a problem. He explained that his business relied primarily on phone contacts coming from outside South Dakota and that many of these telephone calls from existing and prospective customers weren’t ringing through to his office. He […]
The term “stray voltage” has a variety of definitions, some loosely fitting and others technical in nature. Under state law stray voltage is voltage or current between two cow contact points such as the ground and a water tank or feed bunk. Stray voltage can become an inhibitor to dairy production and in some instances […]
There are three types of electric service providers in South Dakota: investor own utilities (IOUs), municipal electrics, and rural electric cooperatives. The PUC has significant regulatory authority relating to IOUs. PUC authority for municipals and rural cooperatives is limited to service quality and territory boundary issues. In municipalities the governing body or an appointed utility […]
