PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. — Henry Red Cloud built Lakota Solar Enterprises and the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center on his family's land, a plot of some 30 acres near a remote stretch of highway here. On an isolated expanse of the Northern Plains, it's one of the harshest environments in the U.S., where temperatures in the winter can drop below zero, the frigidity punctuated by fierce storms able to drop power lines in furies of ice and wind.

But Red Cloud doesn't see the extreme conditions as a handicap. For the last two decades, he has thrown himself into establishing a renewable energy program that can serve as an anchor for heating, electricity and job growth on Pine Ridge, home to the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe.

"You can just watch the clouds blowing through the sky, dumping huge amounts of snow and rain, and you see the potential we have to create an economy around wind and solar," he says.

South Dakota's resources and small population have made the state a leader in renewable energy production. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, almost 75 percent of the state's electricity comes from hydroelectric power and wind, the latter of which has grown fifteenfold in the last decade and marks South Dakota as a top-five state for electricity generated by wind. Area power produced is delivered in the central and western U.S. by public utility the Western Area Power Administration, creating a grid that incentivizes further investment in the industry.

Yet census estimates show less than a third of residents in each of the three counties containing Pine Ridge reservation land – Oglala Lakota, Bennett and Jackson – have relied on electricity for home heating in recent years, with more than half in each place using bottled, tank or liquid propane gas. Between roughly 5 percent and 10 percent have used wood.

In the U.S. overall, some 38 percent of people have used electricity for heat, census estimates show, while approximately 5 percent have relied on propane and 2 percent on wood. Nearly half have had their homes heated by gas piped from a central system.

Like reservations across the country, Pine Ridge has been passed over by state and federal infrastructure projects since state and federal governments were created. WAPA spokeswoman Lisa Meiman says the utility constructed a transmission line that runs through Pine Ridge in 1964, but the line never serviced the reservation itself. It took more than half a century before a private company, Lacreek Electric, extended the line to distribute power to Pine Ridge – a project that was finished this past July.

Even with the transmission line, Josh Fanning, member services and procurement manager for Lacreek Electric, says it costs $7.50 per foot on average to bring service to people's homes. It reportedly can cost upward of $60,000 just to install lines and meters for remote residences.

That means on a roughly 2 million-acre reservation – where census estimates show the median household income is approximately $31,000 and more than half of people live below the poverty line – it can be more feasible for residents to buy propane and wood to burn for heat, often consuming a significant portion of a household's income and leaving less for other needs.

Last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecast that households using propane to heat their homes during the winter would spend $1,661 on average, compared with those predicted to spend $980 on electricity during the same period.

Walter Yellow Hair, who has has worked with Red Cloud on Pine Ridge, says winter is “expensive" and he'll spend around a few hundred dollars a year on wood, which he uses "every time I cook." "Sometimes I get donations," he says.

When fuel runs out, people on Pine Ridge may have to choose between food and paying to heat their homes, which in winter can become a life-or-death decision. In 2014, Native American woman Debbie Dogskin in Fort Yates, North Dakota – on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation – froze to death in a mobile home that had run out of propane. It was February, and overnight temperatures had dropped below zero.

Red Cloud's work is for people like Dogskin, who was 61. Over the last 15 years, he's furnished thousands of stand-alone solar heating units for residents of Pine Ridge and other reservations, freeing people to use more of their money on things like food and health care, instead of burning it up on gas and wood.

Yet there have been limits to how far his help can go. If residents don't have access to a grid, there's no way they can store or sell solar-generated power, meaning scaling up to establish an industry that can provide desperately needed jobs is so tantalizingly close, yet so out of reach.

Henry Red Cloud stands in his workshop on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. (Laura Brickman)

"The issue is how do you store the power, and the grid functions like a battery that can be sold back to the energy company," says Don Kelley, who serves as chairman of the Black Hills chapter of community organizing group Dakota Rural Action and has installed solar panels at his home near Rapid City.

"It comes back to economics; there's no industry on the reservation," Kelley says. "There are so many people that don't have power and they're not going to get it because it's just about money. You're never going to get access to the grid like we have in the rest of the state."

For several years, Kelley says he pushed to establish net metering across the state – a policy that essentially allows small-scale solar users to sell excess energy to a utility for use on a public power grid, offsetting power and installation costs for the user. Kelley says each time the effort was killed in the state Legislature after utility-company opposition, as utilities would be required to pay customers for the power they generate.

The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission "is only responsive to utilities. … We're kind of up against a brick wall," Kelley says. "The reality is small-scale solar is becoming so cheap that it's going to happen whether the utility companies want it or not."

Steve Willard, a lobbyist who has testified against net metering before the Public Utilities Commission, says net metering bills are "a distraction in the Legislature" and one hasn't been brought by lawmakers for some time. "It incentivizes investment in solar but … the utilities shouldn't carry the burden of the individuals with the means or desire to put energy into the system," Willard says.

Meanwhile, Pine Ridge's extreme conditions and lack of many resources – much of the land is not farmable on an industrial scale – created a need for innovation. In 1995, Red Cloud first started to explore stand-alone renewable energy systems, and on a dial-up internet connection found Front Range Renewable Energy, then located near Pueblo, Colorado, which specialized in off-grid renewables.

Working with Front Range, Red Cloud learned how to construct portable power stations and generators, and brought his newfound knowledge back to Pine Ridge. Soon after, Richard Fox with Trees, Water & People – a Colorado nonprofit that focuses on energy poverty as a human rights issue – had foundation money to install 200 solar heating systems in Pine Ridge, and asked Red Cloud to do the work.

During the project, Red Cloud dropped one of the units, shattering the exterior and giving him an opportunity to look inside and see how the system worked. The units apply a 1970s concept of air heating and feature a 32-square-foot absorbing panel, heat sensor and thermostat that in full light can reach 190 degrees. A DC blower transfers the heat generated to people's homes.

"It's pretty old-school," Red Cloud says.

Eventually, Red Cloud opened Lakota Solar Enterprises, using the knowledge he'd gleaned to build the stand-alone solar heating units that families throughout the reservation can install and use at no cost. In 2008, Lakota Solar and Trees, Water & People established the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center, which provides training in renewable energy applications for any indigenous person who wants it.

Since then, Red Cloud has led 1,500 trainings for representatives of dozens of tribes in the Northern Plains region.

"Everybody's starting to get solar panels," Yellow Hair says, recalling Red Cloud helping a family get a generator with solar paneling, light connections and the capability to charge a cellphone.

Sustainability and respect for the environment are deeply rooted in Lakota culture, and as awareness of climate change and energy alternatives increases, Red Cloud's work has gained recognition. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, recently awarded him a grant to expand work he did in the Standing Rock area, where he installed solar equipment to serve protesters opposing the Dakota Access pipeline.

"We as warriors, we bring resources to the tribe, we bring back buffalo and all that, but it was always protecting the earth and looking out for the tribe," Red Cloud says. "We're doing our warrior deeds in the 21st century."

As solar technology becomes cheaper and more efficient, off-grid power generation and the ability to store that power have become more viable than ever, and efforts to establish grid connections are ongoing.

In fact, Wircon GmbH, a German renewable energy development firm, is hoping to construct a 110-megawatt solar-generating facility called Lookout Solar Park I on Pine Ridge. The roughly $25 million dollar project would finally establish a transmission line connecting the reservation to the WAPA grid, opening the doors for the industrial-scale solar infrastructure that Red Cloud has imagined for decades.

Christian Bohn, group general counsel for Wircon, says the company hopes to begin construction as early as 2019, and has already leased 800 acres from a tribe member to build the facility. The investment also holds the promise of something residential solar simply doesn't have the bandwidth to provide on a large scale: jobs.