This month is National Co-op Month. As a reader of Electric Consumer, you likely are aware that you are a member of an electric cooperative. Yet you may not know that your local electric co-op is also part of a cooperative — which creates the electricity delivered to your home.
Your local co-op is a member of Wabash Valley Power, a not-for-profit electricity generation and transmission (G&T) cooperative based in Indianapolis. Wabash Valley Power was created by rural electric cooperatives that banded together to have more control over their future power supply needs. Today, we at Wabash Valley Power serve 23 electric cooperatives in Indiana, Illinois and Missouri that deliver energy to more than 310,000 homes, farms, schools and businesses — including you.
We are driven by our knowledge that we are owned by those we serve. We provide stable, cost-effective electricity that your local co-op reliably delivers to you, your family and your friends. Yet as a retail member of your local electric cooperative, you are more than simply a customer. You are an owner.
Whether Wabash Valley Power, your local electric co-op or one of the other 22 cooperatives we serve, our primary commitment is to benefit those we serve — not to line the pockets of corporate investors in some boardroom far away.
Our diversified power portfolio helps keep costs affordable by reducing the risks to price fluctuations for any one energy resource. This year we added solar energy to natural gas, nuclear power, wind power, dairy digesters and coal to produce the electricity delivered to your community.*
We also keep your energy costs low through our PowerShift® and POWER MOVES® programs. PowerShift® is our load control program for air conditioners, water heaters, field irrigators and pool pumps that use electricity during times of peak demand. The program last year saved more than 54 megawatts of electricity, with $2.6 million returned to participating cooperatives.
The POWER MOVES® programs provide incentives for residential and business members’ energy efficiency upgrades that also help you save money and energy year after year. Rebates are available for HVAC systems, air source heat pumps, new business construction, energy efficient lighting and more. We invite you to join the 48,000 retail members, who collectively have received more than $14.5 million in POWER MOVES® incentives since 2012, by finding an efficiency project that is right for your home or business.
Whether you participate in PowerShift® or POWER MOVES®, reducing your energy use lowers our wholesale power supply cost, which, in turn, benefits your local cooperative and you, the retail member. By partnering together, we can achieve our mission to provide safe, affordable, reliable energy. And that’s the heart of the cooperative difference — and it’s one of the many reasons National Cooperative Month gives us reason to celebrate.
Visit POWERMOVES.com for information about programs, rebates and incentives, or contact your local energy advisor for details.
*Wabash Valley Power supports renewable energy by owning landfill gas generation and purchasing the output from wind farms and biogas generators. Wabash Valley Power sells, separately, the environmental attributes associated with this generation to its members and third parties and, therefore, does not claim this generation as renewable within our own supply portfolio. To purchase renewable energy credits (RECs), contact your local co-op.
