Tribes Seek Energy Control Using Tiny Power Grids Backed by US

The power regularly cuts out on the 500-member Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, throwing the reservation’s casino, community center, and homes into the dark.

The outages can be weekly during cold winters on the Hopi Reservation in northern Arizona, where many of the 9,300 residents still lack access to the grid even though an electric transmission line runs overhead.

Those tribes are now seeking Energy Department help to build their own clean energy generation, using tiny local grids that can improve access to electricity—and, in the process, harness control of their own resources.

“Our goals are to build resilience ...