The co-op community
Executive V.P./CEO
One of my favorite things about Christmas, and the holiday season in general, is that it gives us an opportunity to celebrate being part of a community. Maybe your town has a favorite tradition that everyone comes together to take part in, or you look forward to celebrating with your church community. Many of us will gather with family at this time of year, which can be a community of its own.
If you’re reading this, you’re also part of our cooperative community. It’s one that was started decades ago to bring electricity to this area, and it continues to find new ways of improving our members’ lives. I know I’m proud to be part of this community, and I hope you are, too.
But some of our members may not realize that, just as you are all part of Suwan- nee Valley Electric Cooperative, SVEC also belongs to a cooperative. A cooperative of cooperatives, if you will. SVEC is a member of Seminole Electric Cooperative, a wholesale power provider that generates electricity for us and eight other cooperatives across the state.
We rely on Seminole because running a power plant ourselves wouldn’t be feasible. Instead, they generate our electricity, and SVEC distributes it to each of the homes and businesses in our service area.
As a result, how Seminole generates power and which resources they use are of the utmost importance for SVEC and our members. That’s why, in this month’s newsletter, you can learn more about how your electricity is generated and the changes in store for Seminole in the years to come.
Of course, when it comes to planning out how those generation resources will be put to use, it is crucial that Seminole have a good idea of how much energy a system like SVEC’s will consume. To make those predictions, generation cooperatives use a technique known as load forecasting. You can learn more about how load forecasting works and why it is important in this month's newsletter.
You’ll also find an update on how SVEC continues to support our broader community by awarding scholarships to local students. Be sure to check our website in February for a scholarship application if you or someone you know will graduate from high school this spring.
I would also like to remind everyone about the upcoming 2020 census, and I encourage all of our members to participate. Making sure we get an accurate count for our area every 10 years helps our counties get more funding for crucial services like roadwork, education, health care and more.
Finally, I would like to take a moment to wish all of you a merry Christmas, as well as a happy and healthy New Year. This has been another strong year for our cooperative, from continuing to provide safe, affordable and reliable electric service to finding new ways to contribute to our community. We’ll continue to do so in 2020.