You Co-op’s Resilience Rest On Robustness, Redundancy, and Resourcefulness
Prioritizing these traits helps your Co-op to meet its mission of providing competitive and reliable services, achieving the highest level of member satisfaction, and enhancing the quality of life in our communities.
Our Robustness is Hydro-Powered
For the first time in 86 years, the Co-op’s trustees retired capital credits after one year, meaning all members who were active with the Co-op in 2021 received capital credits in December 2022. This was in part thanks to a rate refund received from the Co-op’s wholesale power provider, BPA, after a banner year for hydropower. The Trustees retired $5 million in 2021 capital credits and $3 million in 2008 capital credits, for a total of $8 million, which was returned to members through December bill credits. Thank you, hydropower!
Redundancy For the Win
Thanks partly to the redundancy built into our system, our ASAI (average service availability index) remains at 99.87%.
Resourcefulness
The Co-op’s renewable generation project at the Flathead County Landfill began an expansion project in 2022. A second engine is due for installation in Spring 2023, doubling the Landfill Gas to Energy plant’s capacity by bringing it to 3.2MW. That’s a pretty resourceful way to make the most out of garbage – this plant can produce enough electricity to power 3,200 houses!
Your Member Service Representatives answered 58,333 of your phone calls in 2022! We’re proud that humans, not machines, answer those calls.
3:47 minutes average call time.
Average hold time is less than 9 seconds!
Temperatures reached -40ºF in some parts of the service territory, creating the highest demand ever on our system around 6 p.m. on December 22: 407.7MW!
For the 4th year in a row, your Trustees announced a 0%, revenue neutral rate change. The Power, Rates, and Compliance department assists the Trustees with structuring fair and equitable rates for all members. How many businesses in our area have been able to keep their rates stable over the last 4 years? We are proud of this achievement for our members!
By year’s end we would grow to
57,166 members
73,239 meters
We installed 1,916 new services
Average consumption per residential service went from 1,167 kWh per meter in 2021 to 1,241 kWh per meter in 2022
Ribeye Raffle shattered records, raising $22,725 for 7 local food banks and donating 1,500+ pounds of meat to those same food banks.
Paperless efforts continue, with 45% of members now choosing paperless billing – a big increase from 38% the year before!
The GIS crew collaborated with the City of Kalispell to create one public access point to report streetlight issues. Check it out on our Report a Streetlight Outage page!
What do you do with your spring weekends? Lineman apprenticeships are typically 7,500 to 8,000 hours of on-the-job training over 3 ½ to 4 years. FEC’s is a 4 year apprenticeship with classwork and pole yard training one weekend a month.
Our hard-working Right-of-Way crew’s mission is to keep trees off power lines (and power on), all year long. In 2022, crews celebrated completing a huge project in the Woods Bay area. This is the most technically challenging feeder to maintain on the entire electric system, due to rocky cliffs and massive trees, many of which are compromised due to beetle kill, mistletoe, and various pests. Way to go, Right-of-Way!
Your Co-op added a new Key Member Advocate position to provide nonresidential members a single point of contact for all their energy needs, such as new construction site selection, power generation, and EV charging questions. This role also assists companies required to report their greenhouse gas emissions.
By year’s end, Human Resources processed a record 15 retirements! The total years of service for the 2022 retirees added up to 324 years.
