CEO’s Message – November 2025

Stay off the Peak

It’s only natural to give thanks during the month of November.

While we here at Wiregrass Electric Cooperative (WEC) are grateful for our members year-round, I’d be remiss to not take this opportunity to thank the people this cooperative exists to serve.

Thank you for being our members. Thank you for participating in our 2025 Annual Meeting last month and for sharing your voice in the cooperative’s election. Thank you for listening when we shared message after message about peak demand. Thank you to those members who changed their behavior and helped keep our peak demand lower than it could have been for this year.

Unfortunately, we can’t let our guard down. Peak demand — the point when a system hits its highest demand for energy — resets each year and determines what our cooperative pays for wholesale power. As a winter-peaking system, WEC’s peak usage historically happens on the coldest day of the year between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., November 1 through February 28.

Our cooperative will continue to alert members by text message, email, automated phone calls, and social media when circumstances and temperatures look right for a peak-demand event.

We hope you continue to listen and take appropriate action. We know it makes a difference not only for the cooperative but for individual members.

Earlier this year, we continued adjusting our demand rate within our rate structure. We increased our demand rate, determined by peak demand, and dropped the energy charge on meter readings.

We believe our demand rate structure works, encouraging members to reduce their usage during peak times. But we need more members involved. To more fairly recover the true wholesale cost for demand/capacity, we will be increasing the residential demand rate from $2.50 per kilowatt to $4 for the upcoming peak period, which typically will be based on the coldest day in the months from November to February. That new demand rate will take effect in March. The plan is to continue to decrease the energy charge (kilowatt-hour), adding to last winter’s energy reduction of 10%. So, when a member watches their peak and controls it to the lowest kW demand possible, they can absolutely save money annually on their energy bill as the high usage months in the summer will be charged at a lower kWh rate.

Actions our members take between now and the end of February to reduce usage during peak events are vital. Just a few hours on the coldest day can mean a significant difference for our members in terms of helping mitigate the rising cost of capacity/demand for our system.

Our high residential load has always been a challenge due to the lack of load diversity in the peak times, especially as available capacity and increasing demand keep butting against one another.

Generating power is expensive, with increased costs to build power plants and federal regulations from the past few years. Added to that is a growing demand for electricity, whether from growth in a region, industrial needs, or the rise of large data centers, including the expanding artificial intelligence sector.

How do we ensure adequate capacity is available? We either build more power-generating plants or reduce demand.

Our peak demand could have been much higher this year due to the extreme winter weather and colder temperatures. Instead, it was lower than our record peak set 3 years ago. Members listened to our messages and reduced their usage during what became our peak.

When it comes to the demand expense, members pay based on what they contribute to the peak. If they use less energy during peak, their monthly demand expense will be less.

Look out for our peak-demand alerts between now and the end of February. Make sure we have a current cellphone number attached to your account so you can get these text alerts. Also, like our Facebook page to get reminders there. Help your neighbors understand how they, too, can pay a lower demand charge.

Next Year, Wiregrass Electric Cooperative will be conducting a cost-of-service study so we can continue to know our true costs to provide services and can continue tweaking our rates within our rate structure to make sure we are recovering our costs in the most fair way possible. Until then, we’re helping give our members a measure of control over their power bill by sharing with them when to be aware and control/reduce their demand and stay off the peak.

We’ve done it before. I know we can do it again.