By DENISE R. FREELAND
News Leader Staff Writer
Carroll Electric Cooperative was founded in 1938 with a low-interest loan from the Rural Electrification Administration, with a mission of bringing electrical service to rural areas not served by investor-owned electric companies.
At that time, most urban areas had electric power, but only about 10 percent of outlying areas did, due to the difficulty of realizing a profit from stringing power lines into sparsely populated regions.
With the funds advanced by the REA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Carroll Electric Cooperative, headquartered in Carrollton, built lines in Carroll, Columbiana, Harrison, Jefferson, Tuscarawas, and Stark counties and electricity was made available to anyone who paid a $10 fee to become a cooperative member. In December 1939, lights began to appear across the countryside.
A map of Carroll Electric's territory today reflects those roots as its service area winds around villages and cities, covering the less populous stretches of countryside in between, from the edge of New Philadelphia almost to the Ohio River.
There also remain fundamental differences between cooperatives and investor-owned electric providers, explained Carroll Electric Cooperative General Manager/CEO Larry Fenbers.
The primary difference is that cooperatives, such as Carroll Electric, are member-owned, meaning that the customers and owners are one and the same; whereas, investors and customers are two separate groups in an investor-owned company.
Cooperatives are also nonprofit organizations, and any profits, called capital credits, are eventually returned to members, Fenbers said.
Money paid into the cooperative is invested in the electricity-delivery system, and, after belonging to the cooperative for 19 years, a member will see an annual credit on his bill or will receive a check if he is no longer a member. In 2009, Fenbers said, members received approximately $700,000 in capital credits.
Members also have a say in how the cooperative is run, Fenbers said. All members are invited to an annual meeting where they elect a board of trustees.
The trustees are charged with hiring a general manager, setting policy, reviewing the financial condition of cooperative, and adjusting rates. The general manager is responsible for handling the day-to-day operations of the cooperative.
Carroll Electric's territory is divided into nine districts, with one trustee being elected from each. Trustees serve three-year terms, so three new trustees are elected annually.
The current Board of Trustees is President Harold Sutton, Vice President Gary Snode, Secretary-Treasurer Harold Barber, Kenneth Brown, Robert McCort, Dale Haley, Frank Chiurco, William Casper, and Kevin Tullis.
One major difference between investor-owned electric companies and Carroll Electric Cooperative, Fenbers pointed out, is that a typical investor-owned company serves approximately 30 customers per mile of line, while Carroll Electric has eight members per mile of line. An investor-owned company receives more revenue per mile of line, while the cost per mile is the same for both types of company, he explained, noting that Carroll Electric serves 12,500 members and maintains 1,482 miles of line with 34 employees.
"I may be biased, but I think we do a pretty good job," Fenbers said.
Carroll Electric's rates compare favorably with those of other power companies. While they are higher than AEP's rates, they are lower than those of First Energy and lower than the average rate of other investor-owned companies in Ohio, according to Fenbers. Carroll Electric's rates are also lower than those of cooperatives with similar terrain.
In the event of a major power outage, as occurred during the snowstorm of Feb. 5, mutual aid is available to cooperatives, Fenbers said, with the statewide cooperative association in Columbus coordinating efforts to get additional crews to the area when necessary.
During the Feb. 5 snowstorm, Fenbers said, 1,800 Carroll Electric customers were without power by midnight on Feb. 4, and 6,000 had lost service by morning. He placed the call requesting help to Columbus at 8 a.m. on Feb. 5, and within hours four crews were on their way from Michigan and two, from western Ohio.
Carroll Electric's response to the power outages caused by the snowstorm was aided by the implementation of the cooperative's new call center, which was scheduled to be brought on line Feb. 9, but went live Feb. 6 to help deal with the crisis, Fenbers said.
The Cooperative Response Center, developed by and for cooperatives, provides after-hours answering services, as well as daily overflow call answering for Carroll Electric.
"The biggest complaint I've heard from our members is, when the power is out, they can't get through," Fenbers said.
Carroll Electric also recently installed a new phone system, providing more lines for customers to call in. Overflow calls are routed to the answering service and, if its lines are all busy, calls will be sent to voice mail, where customers have the option of leaving a message.
These changes should result in a quicker response to calls and fewer busy signals for customers, Fenbers said, noting that, in the past, Carroll Electric was limited to three phone lines, and after-hours calls were taken by the Carroll County Sheriff's office, which has one line.
The Feb. 5 snowstorm was also the "first big test" of the cooperative's computerized Outage Management System, which has been in use for a few months, Fenbers said.
Outages used to be tracked entirely with pencil and paper, he explained. Now they are all entered into the computer and a program analyzes the information to determine which lines are affected.
Fenbers said he was pleased with how the system performed during the power outage.
Carroll Electric operates under a work plan that outlines major projects for the next four years, Fenbers explained.
Under the current work plan, the cooperative recently completed construction of the Washington substation, and has two new substation transformers on order. This additional infrastructure will allow Carroll Electric to shorten the duration of power outages, Fenbers said.
"We've taken some big steps during the past year or two, but we have a lot more we want to do," Fenbers said, noting Carroll Electric is continually rebuilding lines, replacing poles and conductors every year due to age and wear.
The cooperative also recently completed a technology work plan, which includes improving metering and communication to substations, and will be collecting data for the next two years, prior to its implementation, Fenbers said.
Carroll Electric's current automated meter-reading system is 10 years old and nicknamed "Turtles," because it is so slow, Fenbers said, explaining that the cooperative gets meter readings over power lines with the current system, but it takes 27 hours to receive the information.
New systems allow for two-way, instantaneous communication, a capability that is not only a time saver, but is also helpful during power outages, as it allows Carroll Electric to tell instantly if a meter has power. Currently office personnel have to phone members to see if their power has been restored.
Even further in the future, Fenbers said the cooperative plans to obtain technology that will allow it to have remote-control access to substations.
"We'd like to do everything and do it now," he said, "but we don't want to raise rates to what it would take to do that."
Carroll Electric is also in the process of updating its Web site, which will allow customers to pay bills online, and soon the cooperative's Facebook page will be up and running.
For more information about Carroll Electric Cooperative, call 330-627-2116.
Comments