08/20/2026
Update:
On behalf of the Board of Directors and myself, I want to start by apologizing for the year we are having. When we flip a light switch, we expect the lights to come on. This has not been the case as much as we all would have liked this year. Winter Storm Fern caused damage to our system like we have not seen in over 30 years. In a matter of 24 hours, $12 million of damage was done to our system. The picture I am posting with this is one that represents so well the damage the ice caused. The weight caused by 1” of ice can bend a steel pole in half. While we worked as hard as we could to restore, when the final meter was connected, those who were working here in 1994 quickly remembered the year that followed. When a storm like this hits, there is damage that lurks in the background that rears itself at various times for the next good while. Limbs die, limbs that are broken get lodged and fall later, trees (especially pine trees) are weakened. We have a 50 foot easement on our lines with 25 feet on each side of the pole. When a 75 foot tall tree falls toward our line, the line will always take the hit. Many times the trees fall in areas that trip large 3 phase line or substation breakers. These devices are designed to trip, or de-energize, to keep the system safe. Once the repairs are made, the breakers are closed to restore service.
I want to highlight the strong work done by our employees. We have a dedicated team including 21 linemen, 3 electrical engineers, fiber technicians, network engineers, purchasing agents, right of way technicians, meter technicians, staking technicians, member service representatives, and accountants all working together to serve as best as we can. Our employees and their families dedicate their lives to serving our communities. The number of hours invested this year by our employees has been tremendous. When your lights are out, many of our employees’ lights are out as well. They leave behind spouses and children and go out and give their best to restore service. Please keep this in mind when these times occur.
I certainly realize the desire to know more. I want to address this in a few ways: 1. I will address the desire for communication on outages. We have been attempting to do better on keeping you informed when there are major outages. Finding the cause and addressing the outage takes time, and we ask for patience as we work through our routine processes and are committed to keeping you informed as best we can. 2. I will address the desire to know about the status of our system. Our infrastructure is stable and is being improved every day. Our plant is a living system that has continually been upgraded and repaired for the last 92 years. While we make routine upgrades and repairs, we are also working on specific improvement projects based on a 20 year long range plan we had completed by a 3rd party engineering firm in 2024. These specific projects are designed with the future in mind to help keep our grid healthy and operating at its best. We will have studies done within the 20 year plan time period to ensure we are staying on top of keeping up with growth and changes in the system. The vast majority of outages we are experiencing that might be causing concern with the grid are caused by trees falling with many of which coming from outside of our easements and control. With concern with our rights of way, we continue to invest in keeping them as clean as possible. Last fiscal year, we spent roughly $2 million on right of way care. We are also in the process of bringing in contract crews to help with additional tree trimming to help our rights of way even more. We will be providing more information soon on these crews. Prior to closing discussing the status of our system, I want to highlight an improvement we have made in recent years that I am particularly proud of, and that is fault detection. We have a transmission line that runs throughout our territory from Burnsville to Red Bay, AL. This transmission line serves our Tishomingo and Holcut Substations that around 3,000 meters are served out of. When we have trouble on this line, these stations can go dark. We had an outage on this line recently that we were able to restore in less than 2 hours due to our fault detection system. Before having this system, we would have had to ride the line out (in the dark during this situation) looking for the problem which could have taken several hours. With our fault detection system, we were able to determine where the fault occurred, which narrowed our search tremendously. This is an investment that has been made that is a great benefit. 3. We have not done a good job with communication. I want to apologize for this. My goal is to excel in all areas of the co-op, and I have let this area be weak. I recognize this and have taken a small step with having the organization do a better job of outage reporting. While this might seem simple, being good with communication takes time. With this in mind, I soon plan to add a resource that can be dedicated to improving our communication not only during outage times but also giving glimpses of the work we do every day. I ask for patience with this as we work to develop a better communication process.
I want to close with a high-level look at some components of our system. Our system consists of around 14,000 meters, 1,610 miles of line, 27,221 poles, 10,548 transformers, 270 breakers, and 7 substations. I am grateful for our great group of employees who work hard every day to keep the system running. We will continue to work hard, to continue to improve, and to communicate more frequently and in a better manner.
All my best,
Cody Durham, General Manager
