CEO’s Message – August 2025

At Wiregrass Electric Cooperative (WEC), we strive to provide our members more than electricity.

We like to think we lighten the load in our members’ lives. We give our members one less thing to worry about after a long day. All our members have to do is flip a switch, adjust their thermostat, and turn on their oven for supper.

We provide our members with reliable electricity at a rate that is as affordable as possible. That has been this cooperative’s goal since it was founded in 1939 — a task undertaken at a time when providing electricity to rural Southeast Alabama wasn’t considered commercially valuable.

And today, our members still have a democratically controlled organization working to meet their daily energy needs. We’re a not-for-profit organization that employs local people, who are ready to respond 24 hours, 7 days a week, should your lights go out.

We help provide cool air on a steamy summer day, warmth on a cold night, and the soft glow of twinkling lights during the holidays. We brighten the area around your homes and offer an extra layer of security. We are there when families come together, providing the background music and the charge needed to snap pictures of all the memories being made.

We teach local youths how they can have an impact and how their cooperative helps their communities.

We light homes, storefronts, and communities, managing nearly 27,000 meters fed by more than 3,200 miles of line across the Wiregrass. We do this at an affordable rate that allows our members to invest in improving the quality of their own lives.

The cooperative’s efforts don’t stop at our members’ homes. WEC works hard to recruit and grow new businesses for our area, providing jobs and hopefully balancing the load carried by our residential members when it comes to costs.

We are a voice for our membership, which is still largely rural. We travel to Washington, D.C., to meet with national leaders so they understand the impact federal policies have on our membership.

Transparent and trustworthy, we are advocates for all our members, working with our state and national electric cooperative associations to give rural Americans a voice on issues that can affect so much of their lives.

We are there when disaster hits too close to home (as we are in the middle of hurricane season now), using the larger network of electric cooperatives across the country to restore power and return our members to a sense of normalcy.

We care deeply about our communities and our members. We want our members to understand they have ownership in WEC and be proud of their cooperative’s accomplishments. WEC looks out for the interests of our collective membership, wanting nothing more than to do what is best for all our members.

Our goal is simple — to provide reliable, affordable electricity. We feel we are consistent in providing for membership, and they can absolutely count on us.

As a cooperative, our principle of “created by people, for people” has not changed since our early days. After 86 years, we are still powering our members’ lives, and it is an honor to do so.