Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

I hope all of you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! As we begin the New Year, I would like to take this time to briefly reflect on the year 2025 and summarize your Cooperative’s plans for the year 2026.

As you know, the Cooperative started the year with Winter Storm Blair, a devastating ice storm on January 5th that resulted in approximately 16,000 members without service at the height of the storm. Cooperative crews as well as assisting Cooperative crews and contractors worked tirelessly for 8 days to restore service to all Cooperative members. After experiencing Winter Storm Blair, the Spring season began and more severe storms, including damaging winds and devastating tornadoes traveled thru your Cooperatives service territory. In total, your Cooperative’s distribution system experienced damage from seven confirmed tornadoes, including a devastating EF4 tornado in Williamson County just south of Marion. Due to the extensive damage from these storms, the Cooperative’s storm expenses were $3.7 million over budget for the year.

In 2025, the Cooperative continued the necessary investments in the distribution system in order to provide members with a reliable electric supply. Some of the investments included testing poles, treating poles, replacing degraded poles, rebuilding aging infrastructure and trimming/clearing in the vegetation management program. In fact, the Cooperative completed trimming and clearing of vegetation in the Cave In Rock, Christopher, Dixon Springs, Ewing, Golconda North, Golconda South and Vienna substations. As we have certainly experienced in the past with major storms, a sound vegetation management program is crucial to your Cooperative’s ability to reduce risks and outages associated with major weather events and to maintain a reliable electric supply for members.

In summary, the Cooperative expects to end the year 2025 by delivering approximately 766 million kilowatt-hours to all of you as Cooperative members. Unfortunately, the severe storm damages in 2025 resulted in storm expenses that were $3.7 million over budget which will result in the Cooperative experiencing an operating loss of approximately $2.3 million in 2025.

In 2026, your Cooperative will continue to make the necessary investments in the distribution facilities that serve your energy by rebuilding aging infrastructure, replacing degraded poles and performing other maintenance activities including pole testing, regulator maintenance, breaker maintenance and sectionalizing in order to help ensure a safe and reliable electric supply. In fact, the maintenance work will begin in early January with the testing and treatment of approximately 6,500 poles. The Cooperative will also continue to make significant investments in the vegetation management program that is crucial to the reliability of service that you receive. Cooperative members will receive more details regarding the 2026 vegetation management program in next month’s article.

Your Cooperative will continue to work diligently to improve and enhance the level of service and reliability that you receive. On behalf of the Trustees and all employees, we want you to know that your Cooperative is committed to providing reliable and quality service while keeping rates affordable. We thank you for the opportunity to serve you.

See you next month and as always, “We’ll keep the lights on for you.”