About Us

Plant Operators are part of our electric co-op.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, most rural people in North Dakota and the rest of the country lived without electricity. Investor-owned utilities (or IOUs) were convinced it was too expensive to build lines to farms and ranches, and therefore, they certainly couldn't make any money by serving rural areas. The IOUs declined to run power lines to the countryside, leaving rural folks in the dark.

As a result, all across the country, including North Dakota, rural people banded together and formed their own rural electric cooperatives (RECs). With the help of government loans through the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), electric cooperatives sprung up in areas like Mountrail and Williams counties to help light the countryside.

To better serve their members, Mountrail Rural Electric Cooperative and Williams Rural Electric Cooperative consolidated into a single unified cooperative in 1991. The newly formed cooperative became what is now Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative.

Today, Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative provides power to more than 4,400 customers in Mountrail and Williams counties in northwestern North Dakota. MWEC owns and maintains nearly 2,900 miles of overhead line and 320 miles of underground line. We receive the power we pass on to you from Upper Missouri Generation & Transmission Cooperative, headquartered in Sidney, Montana.