A tornado touchdown and powerful thunderstorms with high winds damaged the power lines and areas served by nearly all nine electric co-ops and many municipal utilities on Aug. 2. “This storm, much like those from 2012 and 2013, was ‘all-in’, meaning almost every co-op and municipal that the MECA Safety team serves [...]
To help members understand which part of their electric service is their responsibility and which part resides with the co-op, HomeWorks Tri- County has created a short video to show these differences. The co-op says this issue has come up in the past after wind and ice storms, when members waited for co-op crews to repair their service instead of calling a licensed electrician. [...]
Great Lakes Energy (GLE) will again hold two energy seminars this fall to help their members learn about home heating and cooling options with geothermal and air-source heat pumps and the co-op’s Energy Optimization (EO) programs that offer incentives to help save energy. Incentives include rebates for buying furnaces with variable speed blower motors, heat pump water heaters, refrigerators, TVs, lighting, and more. In [...]
Michigan Interfaith Power & Light (IPL) has announced that its 2015 Outstanding Earth Steward Award will go to Art Thayer, energy efficiency director for the Michigan Electric Cooperative Association (MECA). Thayer will receive the award at IPL’s Green & Grow Your Congregation conference on Oct. 9 at The Peoples Church in East Lansing. The awards ceremony, hosted by Valerie Brader, executive director of the new [...]
According to Danny Janway, the world is smaller than most of us give it credit for and it’s all part of the “Quilt of Life” - a patchwork of people and events that blend together to define us all. Janway grew up in the utility industry - his dad worked 28 years for Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OGE) - and remained in the field [...]
HomeWorks Tri-County Electric has wrapped up its seven district member meetings, with a total of over 1,300 people attending, and the return of $2.4 million in capital credit refunds to its members this year. Directors Luke Pohl (District 3) and Ed Oplinger (District 6) were re-elected, and both ran unopposed. Pohl is the owner of Pohl’s Travel Plaza, north of Grand Ledge, and coaches [...]
The board treasurer of an Iowa electric co-op recently received an email from the CEO asking for immediate help on a wire transfer. Signature details were the same as the CEO would normally use, with the exception that the phone number listed was really the co-op’s fax number. “The treasurer was very alert and sent our CEO a text to confirm,” reports Patty Manuel, [...]
Midwest Energy is now the seventh Michigan electric distribution cooperative to become member-regulated. After hearing member comments, the co-op announced the decision in its July-August issue of Michigan Country Lines magazine. Of the nine co-ops, only Cloverland and Thumb remain fully regulated by the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), and Cloverland recently announced that it is also considering becoming member-regulated. Member regulation allows a [...]
Most co-op field workers have experienced the frustration of returning to the office to find a service order waiting for them at a location they have just been. That’s why Great Lakes Energy has installed a mobile workforce management (MWFM) system to help connect operations and field workers with supervisors and dispatch in real-time. By replacing paper and radio with electronic communications, the new [...]
A six-day project scouting trip has brought a team of Michigan electric co-op employees home with details they’ll need to help bring electricity to a remote area of Guatemala. Jim Carpenter, Cherryland Electric line superintendent; Matt Monroe, Wolverine Power safety coordinator; Kevin Evans, Great Lakes Energy engineering analyst; and Dan King, MECA safety & loss control instructor, traveled June 22-27 to inspect the project [...]
