CEO’s Message: The Power of Community

October 2023

At Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative (SVEC), we pride ourselves on smart planning. We invest in our system to make sure it remains strong in the future. We consider every expenditure carefully and keep the costs to our consumer members in mind. When hurricane season comes around, we review our Emergency Restoration Plan to make sure we’re ready.

In August, when Hurricane Idalia made landfall, we relied on every bit of that planning to carry us through the recovery. In the following days, as our crews began to clear fallen debris and assess the damage to our system, it became clear our cooperative had not experienced anything like this in its nearly 90-year history.

The damage to our system was severe and widespread. About 99% of the homes and businesses we serve were without power. To restore power to those consumer-members, crews had to replace over 1,000 poles and thousands of pieces of equipment such as transformers, insulators and fuses.

But our team wasn’t daunted by the task. Because we have worked hard to build a robust Emergency Restoration Plan, everyone at SVEC was ready to spring into action whether they were in the field clearing the way and making repairs or supporting those who were.

And there were a lot of people to support. At the height of our restoration, SVEC had more than 2,000 workers from our own and other cooperatives, contractors, and municipal utilities teaming up to cut trees, clear debris, make repairs and more. To keep those crews fed and rested, we built what amounted to a small city at our Live Oak headquarters, complete with dining tents, bunk trailers, a laundry, bathrooms and more.

In this newsletter, you can read more about this restoration effort and how SVEC conducted it. You can also find photos of these teams at work to get a better idea of what it was like for our crews on the ground.

I’ve talked before in this column about how fortunate we are to be part of a family of cooperatives who step up to help each other in times of need. After this storm, I can extend that sentiment to the industry as a whole which is made up of cooperatives, municipal and investor-owned utilities. and electrical contractors, All of us are ready and able to work together for the people of our communities.

I’d also like to thank you, our consumer- members, for your patience during a trying couple of weeks. It’s never easy to be without electricity for any amount of time. But throughout the restoration process our employees and visiting crews felt the support of this wonderful community. It’s just 1 of the reasons we’re proud to serve you.