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While the blizzard that hit Minnesota the night before Christmas Eve did little to damage Great River Energy’s transmission system, transmission partners that serve its member-owner cooperatives were not as lucky. “The blizzard caused damage to transmission facilities owned by other utilities, which left 11 of our members’ substations without power for sustained periods,” said Mark Peterson, system operations manager at Great River Energy. “Due to white-out conditions, crews could not safely assess the damage until daylight.” BENCO Electric Cooperative and South Central Electric Association were Great River Energy’s member-owner cooperatives most impacted by the damage to transmission facilities. In total, 678 South Central and 2,624 BENCO member-consumers experienced prolonged outages some for as long as 28 hours.