Is This the Electric Grid of the Future?

“Nebraska is the only 100% public power state, with utilities owned and managed entirely by the state’s own communities.”

Lincoln Electric System serves 150,000 customers as a publicly owned utility in the only state where all power is public. The profile makes the case that this model handles the energy transition better than investor-owned utilities chasing quarterly earnings. When a spring blizzard knocked out power to 10% of customers, the response came from people accountable to the community rather than to shareholders. The fact that this feels like a radical concept tells you everything about how broken the rest of the country’s grid ownership model really is.