(North Dakota Monitor) – Minnkota Power Cooperative plans to add a natural gas-fired power plant in Cass County, taking advantage of a planned pipeline to supply the gas from western North Dakota.
Mac McLennan, president and CEO of Grand Forks-based Minnkota, said Tuesday that the co-op has purchased land in Harmony Township, north of Mapleton.
In an interview, McLennan estimated the construction cost at $1 billion. He said there would likely be one gas-fired power turbine capable of producing 400 megawatts of power. Minnkota currently produces about 1,000 megawatts of electricity, mostly from coal-fired plants in western North Dakota.
McLennan said the plant, which would need approval from regulators, could start generating power in 2031 or 2032.
He said the project is possible because of the Bakken East Pipeline project that will take natural gas from McKenzie County in the heart of the Bakken oil producing region to eastern North Dakota. Natural gas is a byproduct of oil production.
MDU Resources announced last week that its subsidiary, WBI Energy, would move forward with the project. The state of North Dakota created financial incentives to spur development of the pipeline.
McLennan said the area north of Mapleton is an ideal site because it is the end point for an existing WBI gas pipeline. The Bakken East Pipeline will tie into the existing WBI pipeline. It is also near the Bison Substation to transmit electricity.
He said Minnkota has for years been studying how to bring power generation to eastern North Dakota to better serve growth in the Fargo area and new industrial users, such as ag processing. He said the pipeline provided the key to moving forward with a project.
McLennan was at Grand Farm near Casselton to present to the Legislature’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Committee.
McLennan said North Dakota’s electrical grid is under pressure, with demand increasing after a period of relatively flat growth. He told the committee that adding generation in eastern North Dakota strengthens the grid and helps protect customers in the east from outages.
Part of the growing electricity demand is from data centers that need large amounts of electricity to power and cool computers that produce artificial intelligence.
Minnkota Power supplies power to smaller member co-ops, including Cass County Electric, which will supply the Applied Digital data center at Harwood. That data center will use 280 megawatts of power at peak demand.
Even though Minnkota hopes to build in Harmony Township, McLennan said the plant is not being built to power a proposed data center in the same area.
Geronimo Power wants to build a data center that would use 540 megawatts of power. Geronimo plans to use new power generation that could come from a solar farm under construction next to the substation, wind power and potentially natural gas, the company has said.
Otter Tail Power is the electricity supplier for the area near the Bison Substation, so Geronimo would partner with Otter Tail Power, Jay Hesse, senior director of project development for Minnesota-based Geronimo said Tuesday.
Perry Rust speaks Oct. 6, 2026, to a legislative committee at Grand Farm near Casselton, North Dakota. (Photo by Jeff Beach/North Dakota Monitor)
McLennan said clustering the energy facilities would reduce the impact on the rural area.
During public testimony in front of the committee Tuesday, Harmony Township landowner Perry Rust said the energy development is taking valuable farmland out of production that will have ripple effects across that ag industry.
“I think we could lose our way of life,” Rust said.
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