A record crowed gathered at Northbrook Baptist Church Saturday morning for the Cullman Electric Cooperative's 76th annual meeting.

And while there was no official estimate on the number of people in attendance, by the end of the meeting there were 1,729 registered for the event.

"It really thrills me to see this many people turn out to a meeting of their cooperative," President and CEO of Cullman Electric Co-op Grady Smith said. “I say that because there are so many co-ops across this country that don't have members participating at the level you do. For whatever reason, I think you owe yourselves a round of applause because it's your cooperative. We have no stock holders. We do business on Main Street, not Wall Street. At the end of the year, all the margins we have are re-invested in your plant, not the plant that is owned by people elsewhere."

A short video presentation gave a report of what's taken place over the past 12 months since the April 27 tornadoes, and highlighted some of the co-op’s accomplishments, changes that have taken place, and services the co-op is now offering.

Recently, the co-op opened a new substation in Helicon that is served by TVA's 161 KV transmission system to serve areas that were previously served by Trimble and Jones Chapel substations.

"The reason we did that is because it's so much more reliable," Kyle Baggett, Vice President of Engineering and Operations with Cullman Electric Co-op, said. "Most 46 right-of-ways are just better, they're wider than our distribution right-of-ways. The polls aren't that much taller. A typical 161, it's 100 feet in width, and significantly taller. It's less likely to be affected by trees and wind, and situations like that."

Smith said the need for a new substation was related to the growth in the area that took place prior to the current economic downturn.

"When the activity picks back up, and it appears to be picking up some because our activity of new service requests is growing, we're going to have a lot of growth in that area because things are sitting there ready to grow. This has given us time to build that station,  put it in place, and enhance the reliability and be better prepared to serve those new services when people come in, buy those new lots, and build those houses."

Another new addition to the co-op is an 800-kilowatt Caterpillar generator that will be sufficient to run the entire headquarters campus, should another lengthy power outage occur as it did in April of last year.

"We didn't have a generator that could run the entire campus," Baggett said. "We had a 250-kilowatt generator that ran emergency circuits, and when we lost TVA power for several days after the tornado, we were in the dark as well, with the exception of some lights here and there. Not only will this new one be able to run the entire headquarters campus, but it can be loaned out to our commercial and industrial customers when they're experiencing extended outages. This will significantly reduce the amount of time it takes us to get organized, situated, and get our feet on the ground doing what they do best."

Along the line of changes, members will notice a $2 rate change for residential members effective Oct. 1. The rate change will be $2 per month to residential customer charges, while at the same time reduce the energy charge or cost per kilowatt hour  so the average member will realize a decrease of $2 on their monthly electric bill.

"The customer charge is cost associated with having service available whether there's a kilowatt hour used there, or no kilowatt hour used on those lines," Smith said. "If all of our members turned everything off, there's still a cost associated with having those lines available for them to turn on when they opt to run on, and that's what the customer charge is for. To make sure there's dollars available to run the system without regard to how many kilowatt hours are used. This $2 addition will more equally redistribute the cost of having services available to the membership."

In addition to a video presentation, three trustees were re-elected to their term on the board for the 2012-2013 membership year.

Neil Rainwater was re-elected to his district 1 seat, while Robert Tidwell, Jr. will represent district 3. Dr. Lisa Weeks will serve district 5.



* Ashley Graves can be reached by phone at 734-2131, ext. 225, or by email at agraves@cullmantimes.com