Minnesota town makes do without being connected to power grid
SKIBO, Minn. - Television time is restricted in David Fondie’s house. Surfing the internet has time limits, too.
That’s because the remote Iron Range hamlet where he lives has no electricity — at least not the conventional kind. Fondie must fire up a generator to produce his own power, as does everybody in Skibo. The town is not connected to the grid.
“My son is in college and he tries to explain to his buddies why we don’t have power,” said Fondie, who lives in Skibo with his wife and daughter. “?‘How can that be?’ is their reaction. The lines just don’t go that far.”
Skibo, tucked into the Superior National Forest, is home to at least 20 residents, though all but four are seasonal, said Joe Fondie, David’s dad and a sort of de facto mayor of the unincorporated town, which is in the service territory of Lake Country Power.
Cooperatives such as Grand Rapids-based Lake Country brought electricity to the American countryside beginning in the 1930s, stringing wires to sparsely populated places where for-profit utilities feared to tread.
But while data on the topic is hard to find, Lake Country CEO Greg Randa said there are still several rural nooks in Minnesota like Skibo that were never connected.
Read more: http://m.startribune.com/iron-range-village-makes-do-without-being-connected-to-power-grid/513321162/
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