Manager Connection: Town Hall Meeting Questions
General Manager Syd Briggs
During September, Steele-Waseca Cooperative Electric held four town hall meetings as has been our practice since 2010 (except of course during the COVID pandemic).
Steele-Waseca again had great attendance, and it is always rewarding to have time to present information in person to our members on things that are going on at the co-op along with the utility industry. Our members are very “plugged-in” to current events and we had many questions and topics addressed.
Our agenda started out with the topics of capital credits, changes at Steele-Waseca, our power portfolio, and a great presentation by one of our line foremen on Cooperatives Helping Cooperatives last year when we sent four of our line crew to South Carolina and Florida to assist with power restoration after the hurricanes.
Briggs detailed SWCE’s capital credit retirements during the Sept. 3 town hall meeting.
Under capital credits, we reviewed the practice of the Cooperative Principle of paying back all margins we have earned over the 89 years of Steele-Waseca’s operation. This means, as a non-profit organization, we keep track of all revenue that is in excess of our expenses; we allocate it to everyone who purchased energy during a given year and eventually pay it back to those responsible for creating it. Of the previous 89 years of operations, we have refunded 67 years of margins to our members, or 75% of our years of service.
Under the subject of power portfolio, we discussed the great job our power supplier, Great River Energy (GRE), is doing to provide a diverse and dependable source of “keeping the lights on”.
GRE is in the process of acquiring the most efficient and economical sources of power for us, in addition to planning to meet the 2040 Carbon Free bill that was passed a couple of years ago. We discussed the progress and the challenges that GRE faces to achieve all the requirements of that bill.
When we covered this subject some of the questions from our members were: Does carbon-free energy sources raise our cost of electricity? Are we looking at nuclear generation? On the cost of carbon-free energy, GRE has done an exemplary job of finding very economical prices of renewable sources. Currently, my understanding is those prices are competitive with the cost of any new sources of generation including fossil fuels.
We also discussed the advantage of fossil fuels being more reliable and the difficulty GRE is working on to get to 100% carbon-free energy and still have the excellent reliability in the far future. GRE remains positive on achieving all goals of efficient and reliable service through 2040.
On the subject of the possibility of nuclear generation, we discussed the work our statewide organization, Minnesota Rural Electric Association (MREA), is doing to get the nuclear moratorium repealed. Currently no nuclear generation is permitted in Minnesota, and it would be a great source of reliable carbon-free energy if the moratorium were repealed.
We also had a great presentation of the trip four of our line crew took to South Carolina and Florida last year to help with the power restoration after the hurricanes in October. It was amazing to see the extent of the damage and the immense amount of work and coordination required to rebuild much of the electric infrastructure system. Our crew was
dedicated to long days of work in difficult situations, but were welcomed by members and customers there, just like here, when power is being restored. Our crew worked many times in debris-ridden, swampy areas as water rose and slowly receded from the rains and wind.
Trust
#swce/TRUST
