The Tri-County Electric Cooperative General Manager reviewed the cooperative’s mission statement that addresses safety, reliability, and practical energy solutions at the group’s annual meeting on Saturday.
Luke Johnson emphasized the cooperative works to do what is best for the membership and if there isn’t a cost benefit to a project it will not be done to help keep energy rates stable.
Johnson noted Tri-County employees have now worked 1.4-million hours without a lost time incident. He is concerned about an increase in accidents involving tractors and vehicles and encouraging safety be kept in mind.
Johnson is also concerned about the tight electric supply in the MISO supply region that includes South Central Illinois. He notes a power plant being taken out of operation could potentially cause a power shortage. However, he feels Ameren has a plan in place to avoid blackouts.
“They can call this factory and say you need to shutdown because we are a point at a black out situation so I was really encouraged by that. I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 11,000 megawatts that they can actually shut off to keep the homes on, so that was really a good conversation that set my mind at ease.”
Johnson says reliability also requires Tri-County to follow its plan for replacement of rotting poles and tree trimming. In addition, Tri-County currently has three major projects underway. They include reconstruction of the transmission line between the Kinmundy and Patoka substations as well as constructing new two mile transmission lines east of Kinmundy and in the Spring Garden Road area in southern Jefferson County.
The third portion of the mission statement includes providing practical energy solutions to help customers keep electric costs down.
“Different metering, thermostats, those are all things that help us today and we want to be your first line of resource to advise you on that. What does it help me if I have a programmable thermostat? What happens if I can turn that dial up or down while I’m gone? It helps your energy cost. Fiscal responsibility is something we always have in mind in our own homes, and we want you to have that same mindset too. And we want to be able to help you make that decision on if it benefits you or not.”
Johnson says new technology to provide additional help in managing power usage is currently in development with the Southern Illinois Power Cooperative.
Three members were elected to the Tri-County Electric Cooperative Board of Directors without opposition. Michelle Barbee was reelected to serve Marion County and Doug Knolhoff to represent Washington County. Christopher Johnson was elected to serve Jefferson County to replace the retiring Larry Manning.
