A Message from the General Manager: Despite challenges, rates remain unchanged for 2022
Your board of directors, management and employees wish you and your families a very happy and joyous holiday season. In the spirit of giving, your electric cooperative has a few gifts to offer our member owners.
The first gift is the announcement that general service electric rates will not change in 2022. We finished our predictions for the coming year, and we expect our revenue and expenses to allow us to meet our financial requirements without a rate change. I am proud to say your cooperative has held the current rates since January 2019. This is very good news during times when we are experiencing increases in so many other areas. Much credit for this announcement must go to East River Electric and Basin Electric for providing stable wholesale power costs once again.
The second gift coming from your cooperative is the retirement of capital credits. Due to our ending the year in good financial position, Central Electric will be retiring $550,000. Basin Electric’s and East River Electric’s added retirements bring the grand total to almost $826,000 to be returned to our members as we close out 2021. You should have seen this credit on the bill you received in December.
Last month I promised to share our plan of work for the coming year. We believe we will be able to restart the Basin Electric Bus Tour for members in July. We will also offer to send a select number of High School Junior Students to represent us on the NRECA Youth Tour.
We also plan to purchase two electric vehicles (EVs) in the coming year. Grant funds are being used to help pay for a new Polaris Ranger XP Kinetic EV. The Ranger EV side-by-side promises to need very little maintenance and be able to work harder and ride smoother than any UTV in its class. We will use the electric UTV in our operations and make it available for members to experience. You can read more about the project on page 10. The other vehicle we plan to bring into our fleet is the Ford Lightning electric pickup. This will replace an existing vehicle in our fleet and enable us to educate ourselves, our members and the general public on electric transportation. Of course, these purchases depend on delivery in the coming year.
Your cooperative will invest almost $3.5 million in building electric services to new members, making system improvements for reliability and replacing older equipment and meters. We plan to replace 55 miles of dated overhead lines in the coming year, which is an expected investment of $2.4 million. We have about 1,630 miles of older overhead line remaining. Most of that will be replaced, but some will be removed as members disconnect farm sites or wells with no plans for future electric service. We have made significant progress in the past few years and will continue to focus on the future reliability of our system.
All of this depends on the ability of our suppliers to deliver materials. Andrew Baier, our Materials/Plant Supervisor and Brian Bultje, our Manager of Operations, work very closely with our suppliers and manufacturers to anticipate delays and plan our work. We have had to increase inventory and order materials much further in advance to keep operations running smoothly. To illustrate this point, we ordered a replacement bucket truck in the fall of 2020 and expect it to be delivered in spring of 2022. We are currently ordering transformers for delivery in 2023, as this industry is projecting deliveries are almost one year out. Our electricians and HVAC professionals have seen delays and price hikes to nearly all the materials they use daily.
Central Electric Cooperative will take what we have learned in 2021 and go into the new year ready to work with a willingness to change plans and practice patience. I expect another good year as we work together and support one another.
Until next month, be safe!