Ringing in a new year sparks a sense of renewed hope and optimism about the future. For me, it’s a time to reflect on where we are and where we’re going. At the heart of this reflection, I think about ways we can better serve you, the members of the cooperative.

Our team at Wharton County Electric Cooperative is always looking ahead, exploring ways to innovate and utilize technology to improve our services. Keep reading these pages to see this in action with the launch a new bill design this month!

As our communities increasingly rely on electricity to power our local economy, keeping the lights on has never been more important. We’re committed to powering our community as reliably as possible.

So how are we working to ensure reliable power while adapting to a changing energy landscape and our members’ evolving needs?

One critical component of reliable power is the mix of energy resources used to generate the electricity that keeps the lights on across the WCEC service territory. You may not realize it, but we don’t generate electricity. Instead, we purchase it from our energy provider, South Texas Electric Cooperative. We then distribute it to homes and businesses. Our current energy resource mix is made up of 8% wind/hydro/ solar, 57% lignite/natural gas, and 34% purchased power.

While we do use electricity generated from renewable energy sources, we still depend on a diverse energy mix to ensure reliable power that’s available to our members when it’s needed.

In addition to managing a reliable energy mix, WCEC uses technology to enhance our local grid, limit service disruptions and improve outage response times. Advanced metering technology, also known as AMI, enables two-way communication between the co-op and consumers. In the event of a power outage, AMI helps pinpoint the exact location of the outage and can even analyze damaged or tampered meters. AMI helps us save money with real-time data, and ultimately improves power reliability.

One of the best methods for improving our services is monitoring trends from other electric co-ops. This is one of the many benefits of the cooperative business model because for us, it’s about cooperation, not competition.

As we turn our focus to 2024, we hope you enjoy the new bill design, and know that we will continue working to provide the reliable electricity you expect and deserve—for today...and tomorrow.