Utility Capabilities for Developers

Rice Lake Utilities

Rice Lake Utilities is the service provider for the City of Rice Lake of the electric, water, and wastewater services. We are a municipal utility with local control and a five member Utility Commission governs Rice Lake Utilities' operations. Our decisions are made by the Rice Lake Utilities Commission under a tariff authorized by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.

Electric

The electric utility serves 5,900 customers in the City of Rice Lake, as well as a portion of the Township of Rice Lake. While the system peak demand has reached 35 MW our substation is capable of supplying as much as 80 MW. We operate a 7200/12,470 Volt distribution system, however, additional transmission service could be made available. The utility maintains a very competitive rate structure with extremely reliable service. Rice Lake Utilities has received two of the APPA’s Platinum RP3 awards which evaluate reliability and safety as well as several other best in class business practices. The rates of each class are available at http://www.ricelakeutilities.com/our-rates and are subject to a PCAC. Rice Lake Utilities has service availability for all residential, commercial and industrial loads in all common voltages. Electrical feeder circuits serving our industrial parks are all 4 MW capacity and dual fed for backup reliability and increased capacity as needed. Rice Lake’s wholesale power supply is with American Electric Power Partners and is flat and locked in until 2030. Rice Lake has a long term power supply plan which mitigates rate increases through long term contracts as well as effective market purchases backed up by joint action membership with Great Lakes Utilities.  We are off takers of the Lakeswind Project providing us with a 20 year fixed price on a wind resource equal to 20% of our renewable portfolio standards. In 2021, Rice Lake Utilities partnered with AEP to build a 3.75 MW solar field. This reduces our dependency to the grid and also helps our renewable portfolio standards. 

Water

The water utility serves 3,900 customers and operates four municipal wells and four water towers in the City of Rice Lake. The system pumping capacity is currently 3,000 gallons per minute with a current storage capacity of 900,000 gallons. The average daily demand is 1.4 million gallons with a maximum daily capacity of 4.3 million gallons. The water quality is exceptional with a reliable system and a competitive rate schedule. The municipal water system just underwent capacity and volume enhancements with the bulk of the work done to better serve our North Industrial Park. We maintain 70 miles of water main with sizes from 2” to 16”.

Wastewater

The wastewater utility serves 3,900 customers in the City of Rice Lake as well. The utility operates an upgraded biological wastewater treatment facility that has a current design flow of 2.2 million gallons per day with an average daily flow of 1.6 million gallons. The 78 miles of collection system is gravity fed to 8 lift stations to the activated sludge treatment facility utilizing a very environmentally sound and efficient operation. This operation allows the ratepayers in Rice Lake to have some of the lowest rates in Wisconsin. With the last plant upgrade we incorporated fine bubble diffusers for better oxygen transfer thus using less energy along with the addition of new primary and secondary clarifiers for increased treatment capacity. We are capturing the biogas and utilizing it at the plant for heating purposes and will qualify as a renewable resource. 600 metric tons of bio-solids are recycled to farmers' fields as desired nutrients.