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Greg Puckett, EVP & GM, discusses the history of the co-op, where we are now and how we are preparing for the future.
A podcast of Surry-Yadkin Electric Membership Corporation, headquartered in Dobson, NC
Welcome to the first edition of energized, a podcast presented by Surrey Yadkin Electric Membership Corporation. I'm Wendy Wood, manager of communications and community relations, and I will be your host for today's podcast. To provide you with a little background on SY EMC, we are a member owned electric cooperative situated in the Gadkin Valley area of Northwest North Carolina. We serve 27,000 meters in five counties Surrey, Yadkin, Stokes, Wilkes and Forsyth. We look forward to our time during Energized when we can share more information about Surrey Yadkin Electric with you.
Speaker 1:Today on Energized I have invited Greg Puckett our executive vice president and general manager to join me to talk a little bit about the history of the co op where we've been where we are and where we are going what makes a cooperative different from other business models where our power comes from and what some of the challenges are that Surry Gadkin faces. Greg, can you share the beginning of the co op with our listeners?
Speaker 2:Sure, Wendy, and before I start today, I wanna say thanks for putting the podcast together. We look forward to the podcast being able to share information with members from different department leaders as we move forward. Wendy will interview different people periodically and will post updated podcast so please stay tuned for that. But the cooperative got started like many cooperatives around The United States. Back in the early 1930s, there was a need for rural electricity for members, farmers, businessmen and the rural communities were falling behind.
Speaker 2:So on 05/11/1935, President Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Act, known to us as the REA And a lot of people still refer to us today as the REA, not Surry Yakin Electric. It's what we were called for years and a lot of our older members still refer to that. So the cooperatives have grown around the nation. There's around 900 coops in the nation and there's 26 electric cooperatives in North Carolina.
Speaker 1:So how have we grown since Suriakhan was founded in 1940 and where are we today?
Speaker 2:So we were founded in 1940 by a group of local business leaders, community leaders and farmers. One of the first loans that we took out was around $250,000 and it was from the Rural Electrification Act is what enabled us to do that and still today we borrow money through some of those organizations like the USDA and things like that. But we energized our first substation and our first line in February, and boy have we grown since then with 27,400 meters today spread out over five counties and 4,000 miles of line.
Speaker 1:Can you share with us where Suriyakin members power comes from? How we're working to meet North Carolina's renewable mandates and how Suriyakin is preparing for the power needs of the co ops members in the future?
Speaker 2:Sure, our power supply is provided through North Carolina Electric Membership Cooperative and we typically call them NCEMC, which is our statewide organization and it's made up of a group of employees that work hard every day and represent all the cooperatives in the state and in that group, we have what's called a power supply group that helps manage the contracts and the agreements that we have moving forward with nuclear, renewables, gas, peaking plants and other things that are out there that we purchase. So we have those power purchase agreements through them and we buy on the open market, that power comes through the transmission grid and then is delivered to eight of our delivery points and right now we have 17 substations down line of those delivery points with Double Creek that's gonna be coming on later this year, the first of next year which would be Substation number 18 and then it's delivered through the distribution circuits out on the poles and through the transformer and from the service wire right on into the house.
Speaker 1:So tell me about the cooperative advantage, what is the benefit for Sir Yakins members and for the communities that we serve?
Speaker 2:So typically when I say have a question asked about cooperative advantage I would say our seven cooperative principles are key to part of the cooperative advantage and members also owning the cooperative and us being committed to good service for the members but the seven cooperative principles I'll walk through them open and voluntary membership, democratic member control, members economic participation, education, training and information, autonomy and independence, corporation among cooperatives and concern for community and I'll hit on one of these, Wendy, while we're talking about this. Concern for community, I think our employees have a great concern for our community, they love to give back through different things that we do in the community, through our golf tournament, through blood drives, through you and your department, working with local nonprofits, working with Chamber of Commerce, being engaged in the community, sponsoring events, working events for other communities as fundraisers, but we're really committed to the community and community involvement.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me what is Operation Roundup? How do our members give back?
Speaker 2:Operation Roundup is a good program that was started several years back and it is set up by a group of members that oversee it. It's a board of directors and it's a variety of members that volunteer to serve on that board, Operation Roundup board and the way members can participate is just elect to have their bill rounded up to the nearest dollar. That extra change goes to that fund and they make decisions as board members about organizations to give to, so they may reach out and give this month, let's say to a Christian medical ministry or a food bank, they may help someone in a community that's had a house fire or a catastrophic illness and they're out of work, so that's how it works and it's a really good program.
Speaker 1:Okay, so can you tell me what are some of the key challenges that Sir Yakin is facing now and moving forward and how is the cooperative's leadership responding to and helping overcome those challenges?
Speaker 2:So some of the key challenges that we will have moving forward is really reducing wholesale power cost, reducing those demand cost to help members with all types of programs that we're looking at, shift to save rates that we offer members are beneficial for all members and beneficial for the cooperative, I see rates being a challenge, There are challenges now, they're a real extreme challenge now and I want members to understand that we also have infrastructure challenges and they're still pretty significant. When we talk about our system being built, parts of it still is 75, 80 years old, our system has aged and we've worked on it but we have also been building to grow our system from zero up to this 4,000 miles of line. So along the way, we've been building out a new system and improving on the old system but we're doing an inventory right now of our system which is very important to help us know where everything is as far as on the system, GPS coordinates, mapping for tax records, we pay property tax on all of our system that's out there so it's very important to know all the poles, the wire footage.
Speaker 2:You could just imagine, Wendy, over eighty one years, there's been a few mistakes made along the way in the field on a hot day or a cold night so we're trying to true up all of those things and some of the data that's coming in really looks good, we're at a good place on some substations and other substations I could see where we could improve with some more copper replacement. We still have a lot of copper on our system that needs to be replaced. This will help us with outage numbers. It'll make our reliability better. It'll also reduce our line loss which will help us with wholesale power cost.
Speaker 1:I hope this information has been helpful to our listeners and that you all will reach out to us if we can assist you with anything. Also stay tuned for our second podcast when we will discuss rate options and how they benefit our members you can find more information on suryach and emc twenty four hours a day at syemc.com this is Wendy Wood signing off and until next episode remember to stay energized