INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Approximately $39 million in federal loans to parts of Indiana and Michigan is an instance of stated federal commitment to making sure farm communities are as equally positioned as urban areas to economically compete.

Much of the financial help from the USDA is aimed at reducing the number and length of power outages, which can be costly to farmers and other business owners  during prolonged service interruptions. Another focus of the loans is expanding telecommunications and access to broadband to still-unserved rural areas.

More than $100 million in loans were awarded to four states, the other two being North Dakota and South Carolina.

Indiana Farm Bureau spokesman Andy Dietrick said access to modern technology is an issue in rural areas, and in some parts of the state there are still holes in service to be filled, putting those communities right now at a competitive disadvantage.

“There are still some gaps, big gaps, in rural Indiana compared to the kind of telecommunications service you can get in most cities and towns,” said Dietrick.

Near Indianapolis, a $14 million loan went to the Johnson County Rural Electric Membership Corp. to further advance its budding smart grid so power outages happen less frequently and for a shorter duration. Chet Albin, CEO of the utility, said meters for all of the utility’s 25,000 customers are being replaced with ones that automatically record monthly energy consumption.

The meters will also have the technology to pinpoint the location of an outage so power is restored more quickly than having crews doing the more time-consuming task of blindly searching out in the field for the source of outages. Additional upgrades will greatly reduce the amount of customers affected by an outage by allowing power to automatically be drawn from a working substation to replace the juice lost from a failed substation. Albin said the outage will activate switches to let the energy backflow from the working substation.

The bulk of the dollars will go toward improving 345 miles of existing power line and extending new line, said Albin. He said a USDA loan is sought every four years as part of an ongoing system maintenance program, and the funds are paid back over a 30-year period or for the lifespan of the new equipment.

In an increasingly technological world, a reliable source of energy is becoming more important given the speed at which people can access information, so it’s important for utilities in rural areas to keep up.

“It’s a very competitive environment and those are the kinds of utilities that are needed,” said Dietrick.

Thumb Electric Cooperative of Michigan will use its $25 million loan also for similar upgrades, including a nearly $3 million smart grid investment. The utility is in Ubly in the eastern part of the state, just off the western shoreline of Lake Huron.

Smart grid technologies will also be part of the $12.5 million loan to Slope Electric Cooperative in North Dakota, along with improvements to 66 miles of existing line and other system improvements. Much of the remaining $54 million, for South Carolina, will go to improve 605 miles of line while $3 million is earmarked for storm damage restoration.

Extending power to rural areas was one of the undertakings during the Great Depression and made the United States the most productive nation in the world, said USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack. He explained the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service is ‘’honoring that commitment by taking on today’s challenges, including smart grid technology and advanced telecommunications and broadband access.’’

Dietrick said the investment will help keep history from repeating itself from the days when cities had access to electricity decades prior to power being extended to the less populated areas.

“There should not be a difference in the quality of life between the city and the country,” he said.