For the past 66 years, SouthEastern has been a local business owned by those who use it services.  There are a number of advantages to being locally owned including the fact that an elected Board of Trustees, which is also local, establishes policy and provides oversight to ensure the Cooperative functions for the benefit of the entire membership as a whole rather than for the benefit of any special interest group.

SouthEastern’s commitment to its membership begins by helping them keep their electric bills as low as possible and their service reliability as high as possible, consistent with sound business practices.  Service is delivered to members at cost and any margins that exist at the end of a respective year are allocated for return to members at a future date.

However, what we offer to the communities we serve goes far beyond “just keeping the lights on.” It’s neighbors helping neighbors and involves cooperative personnel providing “Live Line” electrical safety programs to literally thousands of area grade school students.  Providing such programs has a cost, but the cost of not providing them could be much greater.  “Service” means not only making sure the electricity is flowing, but also making sure that the community and its residents are as safe as possible.

Another advantage of being locally owned is that our members can resolve questions about service and bills locally.  They even have the option of coming into our local Eldorado office and discussing them with a local employee “eyeball to eyeball” if they so desire.  This is in sharp contrast with our investor-owned neighbors who have closed local offices and consolidated their operations with distant or even out-of-state facilities.

Locally owned also means the dollars our member/owners spend for electric energy stay right here in Southern Illinois, contributing to our local economy.