Salt River Project is joining 20 other utilities from across the nation on a local humanitarian mission to provide electricity to Arizona families on the Navajo Nation who still live without electricity in the modern world.
These families live without basic common necessities such as a refrigerator, stove and running water.SRP is dedicating two crews to assist on the Navajo Nation for three weeks as line workers from 15 states unite once again to Light Up Navajo (LUN). A total of 14 SRP employees will be able to participate through April 22.
This marks the fourth time the mutual-aid initiative organized jointly by the American Public Power Association and the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, which is the public power utility serving the Navajo Nation.
SRP’s first wave of line crews will depart Tempe on the morning of Saturday, April 1, to begin setting miles of wooden distribution poles and stringing conductor through the vast Navajo Nation. SRP will be working in the area of Lechee, Arizona.
By Monday, April 3, SRP line workers hope to energize their first home. Since the project launch in 2019, a total of 780 homes on the Navajo Nation now have electricity due to LUN efforts. SRP employees directly provided power to 98 of those families so far.
Electrifying just one household is an expensive endeavor. Each household, on average, requires one transformer, 0.6 miles of wire, nine poles, 16 insulators, and two arrestors to connect to the electric grid; which is an average material cost of around $5,500.Of the 55,000 homes located on the 27,000 square mile Navajo Nation (roughly the size of West Virginia), about 14,000 homes still do not have electricity. They represent 75 percent of all U.S. households that do not have power.
Public power utilities like SRP are donating manpower, equipment and/or materials. The public is also invited to participate in the Light Up Navajo initiative by making cash or material donations. To learn more, visit www.publicpower.org/donate-light-navajo.
To learn more, view the video below.
