September 2025
Annual Meeting
SouthEastern Illinois Electric Cooperative held its’ 86th Annual Meeting on Tuesday, August 5, 2025 with 967 members registered and approximately 1,200 in total attendance. For those of you who were unable to attend your Cooperative’s annual meeting, this article will summarize the report members received at the annual meeting.
Your Cooperative invested $10.8 million in system improvements to replace aging infrastructure and invested $8.8 million to perform strategic maintenance activities in order to ensure that members receive a reliable electric supply while also maximizing the life and value of Cooperative assets. Just a few examples of the maintenance activities include the Pole Testing and Treatment program and the Vegetation Management Plan. Over the past several years, your Cooperative has performed a testing and select treatment program on approximately 69,000 poles. This program identifies poles that have met their useful life and must be replaced, ensures the integrity of other pole assets, extends the useful life of poles and saves Cooperative members millions in early replacement costs. The Vegetation Management Plan, which is crucial to electric reliability, ensures that we perform trimming and clearing along approximately 800 miles of distribution line every year.
The Cooperative sold approximately 734 million kwh in 2024 resulting in an increase of 1.6% from 2023. This slight increase in kilowatt hours sold was due to higher residential, small commercial and large commercial sales. The Cooperative constructed 244 new services to homes, farms and businesses and upgraded 17 services to provide additional energy capacity.
Your Cooperative ended the year 2024 in sound financial condition. As a not-for-profit organization, your Cooperative does not strive to produce profits for shareholders and investors but must maintain a sound financial position for the membership. In 2024, your Cooperative’s Board of Trustees approved the retirement and return of $1.68 million of Capital Credits and the capital credit checks were mailed to members in December of 2024. Over the past fifteen years, your Cooperative has retired and returned approximately $27.5 million to Cooperative members.
While the year 2024 was a very successful year for your Cooperative, 2025 has proven to be extremely challenging due to the numerous severe storms that have hit the Cooperative’s service area. The year began with Ice Storm Blair on January 5th that resulted in ice accumulation throughout the Cooperative’s service territory, with some locations exceeding over 1 inch of ice and resulted in approximately 16,000 outages. On March 15th, an EF2 Tornado began near Vienna and traveled northeast thru Johnson County causing extensive damage to the Cooperative’s Vienna Substation. On April 2nd, another severe storm hit our service area that included strong winds and three confirmed tornadoes. These tornadoes included an EF2 tornado in Johnson County, an EF1 tornado in Williamson County and an EF1 tornado in Saline County. Then on May 16th, another severe weather storm hit our service are that included strong winds and three more confirmed tornadoes. These tornadoes included a very devastating EF4 tornado in Williamson County, an EF2 tornado in Gallatin County and an EF1 tornado in Saline County.
Your Cooperative is currently experiencing an increase in our wholesale power costs from Southern Illinois Power Cooperative located at the Lake of Egypt, primarily due to higher priced fuels consumed to generate electricity including coal and carbon. These increased fuel costs are reflected in the wholesale power cost adjustment charge that varies monthly in your retail rate. Given the extensive storm damage your Cooperative has incurred during the first half of 2025 that has resulted in $3.7 million in damages, you may be wondering if a retail rate increase will be needed. At this time, it is almost certain that the year 2025 will produce negative margins due to the extensive storm damage incurred. However, your Cooperative’s strong financial condition and equity position provides some options in how to address the current losses. After careful consideration by the management team and the Board of Trustees, your Cooperative has made the decision to lower the equity position slightly in an effort to maintain the current retail rates. Therefore, we do not anticipate the need to increase retail rates at this time.
Cooperative members learned that the electric generation is becoming more vulnerable during peak demand conditions due to a rapid transition in the electric generation industry to construct more renewable energy resources (solar and wind) and retiring fossil fuel generation (primarily coal but natural gas as well). The electric generation industry is becoming more reliant on intermittent sources like solar and wind while at the same time, the industry is projecting electric demand growth of 15-25% by 2030. The new growth in demand will be driven by new artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, increased domestic manufacturing and the electrification of almost everything from appliances to automobiles.
With increasing demand for electricity and decreasing dispatchable generation supply, supply and demand economics leads to increasing supply prices and that’s what is happening. Just to provide some perspective on the market price increases in capacity – in 2024, the MISO market price of summer capacity cleared at $30 per MW-Day – this year in 2025, that same summer capacity market price jumped from $30 to $666 per MW-Day. Other utility customers that rely more heavily on purchasing capacity in markets are experiencing significant rate increases. Fortunately, your Cooperative is part owner of Southern Illinois Power Cooperative located at the Lake of Egypt and owning your own generation assets has proved very beneficial by keeping member rates more affordable and more stable.
It is imperative that the industry, other stakeholders and consumers recognize the significance and importance of having sufficient generation capacity available to meet the peak demands of consumers. This means we must keep all generation, especially dispatchable fossil generation units, running now and into the foreseeable future. Renewables such as wind and solar are in your Cooperative’s generation portfolio and they are a part of our current generation mix. However, wind and solar are simply not able to provide energy and capacity when we as consumers demand energy and the long-duration energy storage solutions are not available.
As we look to the future, your Cooperative’s strategic vision includes implementing a new automated metering infrastructure, implementing new technologies and voluntary programs for members to participate in demand response programs. Thru participation in these programs, members may be able to reduce their energy demand and save money while helping reduce the strain on the electric grid during peak demand times.
Your Cooperative was formed 87 years ago to bring electricity to rural areas of southeastern Illinois. We appreciate the opportunity to serve you and we want you to know that your Cooperative is owned by the people it serves and will continue to be an electric cooperative that is truly operated “for the people and by the people.”
See you next month and as always, “We’ll keep the lights on for you.”
