Ninety-two percent of the 175,000 Indian households on Indian lands are located in just four of the North American Electric Reliability Council subregions. Electric utilities servicing counties containing Indian lands in three of those four subregions have higher rates than all utilities with residential customers in the subregion. From these data, it is impossible to determine whether the higher costs are due to the cost of service for sparsely populated rural areas, including Indian lands or other factors. North American Electric Reliability Council. See Appendix D for map of NERC regions.
Some Indian lands appear to have potential for renewable energy development.
These premiums exclude any transmission costs required to connect the plant to the regional transmission grid. On the same reservation, wind power is projected to cost only 0.4 cents per kWh more. In general, biomass provides the greatest potential for relatively inexpensive renewable-based central station power on 52 of the 61 reservations distributed widely across the United States. By contrast, all of the Indian lands where wind has the lowest renewable cost premium are located in New Mexico. The premium for wind electricity on New Mexico reservations is 1.8 cents per kWh.