David Lett
Electric cooperatives are the foundation of the rural electricity network. Miles of power lines link landowners, farmers, suburbanites and businesses to competitively priced cooperative energy.
Whether we grew up in the country, or moved here to have the best the countryside has to offer, we live here because we like it here. We love our community — the wide open spaces, friendly people and thriving businesses.
Unlike energy providers that serve dense population centers, rural electric cooperatives travel long distances to serve fewer members, which puts constant upward pressure on your REMC’s cost of service.
Despite that disparity, your REMC goes the extra mile to provide greater added value and services than any other type of utility. Did you know that co-ops serve an average of 7.4 consumers per mile of line and collect annual revenue of approximately $16,000 per mile of line? By comparison, investor-owned utilities average 34 customers per mile of line and collect $75,500 per mile. Publicly-owned utilities, or municipals, average 48 consumers and collect $113,000 per mile.
Every electric cooperative faces challenges to keeping costs down and the lights on, safely and reliably. As your not-for-profit cooperative, we operate at cost. Did you know that Harrison REMC is one of the top co-ops in the nation at keeping cost low? While managing costs is a constant challenge, we have managed to control our costs better than 93 percent of the co-ops in the nation over the past five years.
There’s one other big difference — the cooperative difference. Our purpose goes beyond the traditional. We power our communities while providing a path toward a cleaner, more sustainable future. Our goal is to efficiently deliver affordable, reliable and safe energy while responding to outages more quickly, securing the grid from attacks and giving you, our member-owner, more control, greater flexibility and more choices.
