SouthEastern Illinois Electric Cooperative held its' 70th Annual Meeting on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 with 1,245 members registered and approximately 1,700 in total attendance.  For those of you who were unable to attend your Cooperative's annual meeting, this article will summarize the report members received at the annual meeting.

During the year 2007, your Cooperative invested $6.1 million in system improvements to replace aging infrastructure and invested $4 million in maintenance activities in order to increase electric service reliability.  Your Cooperative also constructed 452 new services, upgraded 216 services, rebuilt 44 miles of distribution line and replaced over 300 bad poles.  The Cooperative also accomplished some objectives that have proved to increase reliability and enhance member service including the rubber gloving program, a progressive vegetation management program and new payment options.

In February of 2008, Southern Illinois was hit by an ice storm of historical magnitudes that caused outages to approximately 11,700 members.  The amount of ice and the number of downed trees caused significant damage to the Cooperative's distribution system that totaled just over $2 million. 

Cooperative members were provided with statistics showing the ever increasing costs in natural resources and all forms of energy including coal, carbon, oil, gasoline and diesel fuel.  Members were informed that 74% of the Cooperative's total cost is purchasing wholesale electricity for the members.  Your Cooperative has been able to provide cost effective energy generation and transmission thru its own, member-owned electric generation and transmission cooperative, Southern Illinois Power Cooperative, located at the Lake of Egypt near Marion.  This generation plant, along with 50% of the electricity generated nationwide, primarily consumes coal and carbon to produce electricity.  The cost of coal, like other natural resources, has increased drastically in the past year.  In fact, the market price of Illinois Basin coal has escalated from $36 per ton in February of this year to over $71 per ton in July of this year, an increase of 97% over the past 5 months.  Due to the increasing costs in natural resources including coal, carbon and natural gas, the cost of wholesale power is increasing as well.  The Cooperative informed members that the increases in the costs of wholesale power will appear in the charge titled "Wholesale Power Cost Adjustment" and will increase the average residential rate by 6% - 9% in the coming year.  In addition, the Cooperative will implement a 3% base rate increase on invoices received in April 2009.  This means that the average residential retail rate will increase by approximately 9% - 12% depending upon the amount of energy consumed by the residential member.

In addition, Cooperative members were informed about federal climate change legislation that is currently under review by the U.S. Congress that may require the implementation of carbon capture and sequestration technologies.  Cooperative members were informed that the existing technologies available today are not cost effective for large scale power plants.  The Cooperative also believes that Congress must recognize that the issues surrounding global climate change are very complex, will require new technologies, time and a great deal of money.  Cooperative members were encouraged to complete a card titled "Our Energy, Our Future: A Dialogue With America" that will be used to begin discussions between electric cooperative members and the elected officials about the challenge facing all of us in the energy industry.