Next generation energy. March 27, 2026 Reliable and affordable power. At Cedar Falls Utilities, Cedar Falls Utilities take a long-term approach to serving its community. From maintaining local generation to investing in renewable energy, its focus has remained the same: reliable, affordable power for the people who live and work here. That same forward-thinking approach is driving the development of the Viking Energy Center, a project designed to meet the community's energy needs for decades to come. A project years in the making. The new Viking Energy Center is not a reaction to any single customer or industry trend. Planning for new local generation has been underway for years. Its existing energy generation resources are aging. To continue delivering the reliable and affordable power its customers expect, Cedar Falls Utilities must invest in new energy infrastructure. The Viking Energy Center is a direct response to that need. The new facility will use natural gas-fired reciprocating engines, a technology being adopted by utilities across the country. These engines are efficient, flexible and designed to complement renewable energy sources. Keeping electric bills affordable. Cedar Falls residents benefit from the generating assets CFU owns. CFU maintains its local Streeter Station power plant, natural gas turbines and solar array. In addition, CFU owns shares of large power plants in Western Iowa. These assets help reduce how much electricity Cedar Falls Utilities need to purchase during periods of high market prices. But as existing facilities age, replacing them with modern, efficient generation is essential. The Viking Energy Center will help stabilize costs and protect customers from price volatility. This helps keep electric bills as low as possible. Supporting renewable energy growth. Cedar Falls already benefits from a strong supply of renewable energy in its state. In fact, 61% of the energy used in its community comes from renewable sources. However, renewable energy depends on weather conditions. When the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining, Cedar Falls Utilities still need reliable power. The Viking Energy Center is designed to ramp up quickly when renewable generation dips, ensuring Cedar Falls Utilities can continue to maximize renewable use while maintaining reliable service. Providing reliable, resilient power. Local generation plays a critical role during extreme weather or disruptions to the regional grid. By producing power right here in Cedar Falls, Cedar Falls Utilities can maintain service even when the broader electric grid is under stress. The engines to be installed at the Viking Energy Center produce lower emissions than existing plants and are designed to adapt to future fuel technologies. Addressing questions about crypto mining. Some have asked about the role of cryptocurrency mining in its community, due to recent zoning changes proposed by the City of Cedar Falls. It's important to be clear: Cedar Falls Utilities serves a wide range of customers and energy planning is based on the needs of the entire system. The Viking Energy Center is a community-driven infrastructure project, not a project built for any single customer or industry. Cedar Falls Utilities do serve large industrial customers, including those in emerging industries like crypto mining. These customers operate under specific agreements that are designed to benefit the entire community. Any revenue generated from these customers is reinvested locally, supporting the services and reliability its community depends on. The City is currently considering zoning changes to accommodate additional crypto mining operations. At Cedar Falls Utilities, its role isn't to advocate for or against this change, but to serve its community reliably and respond to its needs. The Viking Energy Center reflects years of planning to meet its community's future energy needs, independent of any cryptocurrency mining activity. Cedar Falls Utilities is working on your behalf. As a locally owned utility, CFU makes choices that put its community first. The Viking Energy Center continues that tradition. Cedar Falls Utilities appreciate customer engagement and interest in the project. More information is available online at cfu.net/generation.

Officials in Cedar Falls, Iowa, delay hearing on Simple Mining's cryptomine rezoning. Bitcoin firm Simple Mining faces resistance from local residents March 27, 2026 Officials in Cedar Falls, Iowa, have delayed a public hearing on zoning and code changes required for a proposed cryptocurrency mining facility on the city's southwest side. The hearing was pushed back to April 22 after residents raised concerns over the potential environmental impacts and utility costs incurred by the site proposed by Simple Mining, a Bitcoin mining company based in Cedar Falls. The proposal centers on more than 38 acres near the West Viking Road Industrial Park, where the city has been working with Cedar Falls Utilities (CFU) and Simple Mining on a possible mining site. Under the plans, the crypto mine would sit next to CFU's proposed Viking Energy Center, a new natural gas-based generation project that the utility says will support grid resiliency, complement renewable supply, and help keep customer energy costs low. CFU says the plant has been in planning for years and was not created specifically for the mining proposal. The city is seeking to rezone the site from light industrial use to heavy industrial use for the power plant while also creating a new zoning category for cryptocurrency mining. City documents cited by local media indicate the proposed rules would require setbacks from residential districts, noise mitigation measures, and a water-cooling plan. Reporting also says the crypto facility would use a closed-loop recirculating system intended to reduce water consumption. Residents who spoke ahead of and during the planning process said they were worried about noise, electricity demand, water usage, and the broader environmental impact of pairing a high-load mining operation with a new gas-fired plant. In response, Simple Mining said the facility would use little water and could be shut down quickly during periods of higher power prices. CFU says the Viking Energy Center will be built south of Viking Road and east of Union Road in the industrial park and will take several years to construct. More in crypto.

Both projects are part of the DOE's $7.5 million investment into data analytics for a more reliable, resilient, and secure electricity system.Iowa State University , SparkMeter, and others received a $1 million grant to bring data-driven asset management to enhance rural distribution grids in the U.S.SparkMeter also recognized as a partner to support West Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation under a $1 million grant led by the University of Kentucky to maximize transformer capacity utilization with dynamic line ratings.WASHINGTON, Aug. 28, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- SparkMeter , a provider of grid management services and solutions that increase access to reliable electricity in underserved communities across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, will support two grant-funded projects under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity 's $7.5 million investment to address system challenges, improve overall grid performance, and advance grid reliability and resilience.The health of distribution transformers plays a significant role in grid resilience and reliability, yet many U.S. utilities in rural regions depend on increasingly aged and undersized transformers to deliver electricity to their customers. As a result, utilities are struggling to predict and mitigate transformer failures to prevent power supply outages in light of more intense weather events, grid-edge renewables, and electrification.Selected to support two of the eight projects awarded grants as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, SparkMeter will accelerate efforts to strengthen and modernize the nation's power grid by partnering with:Iowa State University (ISU), which received $1,000,000 to enhance utilities' awareness of real-time health conditions of distribution transformers, minimizing service disruptions and improving system reliability and resilience; and(ISU), which received to enhance utilities' awareness of real-time health conditions of distribution transformers, minimizing service disruptions and improving system reliability and resilience; and West Kentucky Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation (WKRECC), which is a subrecipient to a $999,933 grant received by the University of Kentucky to improve transformer capacity utilization, reduce overloading, and enhance load modeling and event detection to minimize grid outage times.Both projects will leverage SparkMeter's AI-driven Praxis data engineering platform, which provides a 360-degree view of utility data sources to access and process large-scale datasets from any source. Using Praxis's comprehensive suite of data analytics tools, researchers and utilities can obtain an accurate and insightful understanding of transformer loading conditions in real time.In collaboration with Iowa State University and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), SparkMeter will leverage its GridScan software to simplify the visualization and analysis of thousands of distribution transformers using data from three utilities: a rural co-op, Linn County REC ; an investor-owned utility, AES ; and a municipal utility, Cedar Falls Utilities (CFU)