SVEC Newsletter-April 2016

Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative Lighting the way since 1937

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Power Outage Reporting

Suwannee Valley

currents April 2016

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800-752-0025 SERVING RURAL AND URBAN SUWANNEE VALLEY OWNED BY THOSE WE SERVE 11340 100th Street • Live Oak, FL 32060

CEO’S COR NER

Service in the storm Michael S. McWaters Executive V.P./CEO

Spring has officially arrived, and that means saying goodbye to the winter chill and welcoming warmer weather. Unfortunately, spring can also mean the arrival of storms and other hazardous weather.

At SVEC, we work diligently to prevent outages before they happen. We trim tree limbs that may fall across lines and maintain our distribution system to make sure that when you flip on the lights, they come on.

However, some outages are inevitable. When they happen, we call our line crews. These employees are often the first responders on the scene, making sure roads are lit for other rescue personnel and that they have the power they need to help others.

This month, Suwannee County is observing National Lineman Appreciation Day on April 11. All of us here at SVEC want to thank our linemen for the difficult job they do in keeping our electric system working so that we are safe during storms. I encourage all of our members to thank the linemen in their lives as well.

In this month’s newsletter, you can learn more about what SVEC is doing to keep your cooperative going strong well into the future. Eight students from the high schools in SVEC’s service area had the chance to visit Tallahassee to learn about state government and the important role of cooperatives.

You’ll also find an important look at what SVEC accomplished over the last year and what’s in store for the months ahead from leaders in each department.

We’re proud of everything we’ve been able to accomplish and think you’ll be just as excited about what’s to come. 

Reliable, affordable, safe: SVEC is working hard to serve members Here at SVEC, we’re fortunate to work for a cooperative, where the needs of our members always take precedence over the bottom line. We don’t answer to shareholders or a call for higher profits, and that frees us to focus on you, the members.

In an industry that changes as quickly as ours, providing affordable and reliable service requires smart planning and execution, but it’s also important that our members always know what’s happening at their electric utility. That’s why this month we’re sharing what we’ve been working on for the past year, as well as some of our goals for 2016. As you read over the work we’ve done, we hope you’ll take pride in what we’ve accomplished together and look forward to the year ahead.

Keeping the lights on

Maintaining a system that spans four counties takes a team of the most dedicated professionals, and at SVEC we’re proud to have some of the best working roundthe-clock to keep everything operating the way it should. And in 2015, the keyword was reliability.

“Basically all the outside work, whether it was overhead, underground, new services or changing out lines, it was all done with an eye toward reducing outages as much as possible,” says Director of Operations Andy Lawrence.

Those efforts were supported by Director of Engineering Kurt Miller’s team, which he describes as the backbone of SVEC’s sys Continued on Page 4, see SVEC

“We plan together. We stay safe together.”

National Lineman Appreciation Day is April 11.

#thankalineman

SVEC sponsors eight local students to attend Florida Youth Tour In late February, a group of eight area high school students traveled to Tallahassee for the annual Florida Electric Cooperatives Association Inc. Youth Tour sponsored by Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative Inc., and now two participants are looking forward to a trip to the NRECA Youth Tour in Washington, D.C. this summer.

This is the 38th year local students have participated in the Youth Tour, SVEC Manager of Community Relations Baynard Ward says. Two students each from the four area high schools in the co-op’s service area are recommended to participate in the two-day state tour by their schools’ guidance counselors, and all expenses are paid.

Then, students are tested on their knowledge of the cooperative, with the top two scorers invited to attend the national Youth Tour, which is sponsored by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and includes visits to monuments, federal agencies and to U.S. Congress members’ offices among other sightseeing stops.

On the Tallahassee trip, activities for participating students included a tour of the Florida State Capitol and a visit to the Supreme Court of Florida’s chambers and the Challenger Learning

Center, which has simulated missions geared to spark students’ interest in pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Some students even tried their hands at debating real-world legal issues.

In the state supreme court’s chambers, “they do a mock trial where they discuss an actual case that has occurred in the past, so students from the cooperatives are chosen to sit in the actual justices’ seats at the bench,” Ward says. “Some are also chosen as court clerks, and in the role of defense and prosecution.”

At the Capitol building, students met with Florida State Rep. Elizabeth W. Porter and dropped by the offices of Sen. Charles S. Dean Sr. and Sen. Bill Montford to meet with staff members.

To get a better feel for how the Florida legislature operates, students were given access to the state senate chambers where

they debated a mock bill, offered up amendments and cast their votes.

“Exposure to the state legislative and judicial systems is a great experience for the students,” Ward says.

Students also heard a presentation from one of last year’s state- and national-level Youth Tour participants, Lacey Swafford, an 18-year-old senior at Lafayette High School who lives near Branford. Swafford talked about her experiences with the youth tours.

Swafford, a softball standout, has recently been accepted into the United States Military Academy at West Point in New York and will play softball there. She looks back fondly on the youth tours, which allowed her to visit Washington, D.C. for the first time along with about 1,500 other students from across the U.S. “It really was one of those things that it is hard to talk about how

awesome it was … the people, the places,” she says.

Swafford says she and other participants toured several national monuments, and with her West Point ambitions already in mind, she was particularly interested in watching Marines marching in formation at the Iwo Jima Memorial. She also took a moment to enjoy some “peoplewatching” at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and says she felt a true sense of unity with the other Americans and visitors from other countries she saw there.

Swafford says during her interview process, West Point officials seemed impressed that the youth tours were highlights on her resume. She hasn’t yet decided on a major at the academy, but she is interested in engineering and neuroscience as strong possibilities.

She says she’s never had trouble making friends in new situations, but the youth tours en-

YOUTH TOUR PARTICIPANTS abled her to make several more.

“It was sort of like getting a new family in that time that we were up there on tour,” she says.

Ward says the tours also enable students to learn more about the full reach and impact of the electric co-op system, with some historical perspectives on how and why the co-ops were created.

“Many of these kids recognize Suwannee Valley Electric because we’re the local electric cooperative, but I think for a lot of these young people, they don’t realize there are many more cooperatives across the state and nation,” he says.

Since the national Youth Tour’s inception in the late 1950s, more than 50,000 students have participated, according to the NRECA website.

Branford High School junior Tyanne Liu, 17, will be one of the students traveling to Washington, D.C. on June 11-16, along with Hannah Poole from Lafayette High School. Liu says she was aware of the tours because one of her friends had participated in the past, and after one of her school’s counselors suggested she participate this year, she readily agreed.

“I’d never been to Tallahassee before, so it was a new experience for me,” she says, adding that she found learning about the state supreme court was one of the most interesting aspects of her visit.

Another first for Liu will be her upcoming trip to the nation’s capital, where she looks forward to seeing national monuments and learning more about the federal government.

Liu plans to attend college in preparation for a career in a medical field, possibly nursing.

“I really appreciate the opportunity,” she says of the tour. “… It was a really good experience.” 

Students participating in the 2016 Florida Electric Cooperatives Association Inc. Youth Tour sponsored by Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative Inc.

Hannah Carter Hamilton High School

Cameron Cassube Branford High School

Tyanne Lui* Branford High School

Destany Newbern Lafayette High School

Amanda Hughes Hamilton High School

Sydney McWaters Suwannee High School

Hannah Poole* Lafayette High School

Angel Soto Rivera Suwannee High School

* Denotes students who were also selected to attend the national Youth Tour in Washington, D.C. this summer.

SVEC, continued from front

tem, making sure operations has the right tools to get the job done. They are currently working to upgrade the system to support a higher voltage of 25kV. “It costs energy to move energy, so to move the energy to your house is going to incur a ‘transportation cost,’” Miller explains. “By increasing the voltage we lower the transportation cost of that electricity to your house by a factor of four.”

But perhaps the initiative with the biggest impact already has been the switch from a five-year right-of-way cycle to a three-year cycle, meaning branches near power lines are trimmed back more often. Having cleared 962 miles in 2015, there have already been significantly fewer outages during recent wind storms.

Safety first

While SVEC is dedicated to providing reliable and affordable service to all of our members, our first priority is always the safety of the men who do whatever it takes each day to keep the lights on for their friends and neighbors.

Last year the SVEC team excelled when it came to focusing on safety and continues to do so today. The cooperative has currently gone more than 500 days without a doctor-treated injury.

SVEC employees also drove nearly 890,000 miles last year with only two police-reported incidents.

Of course, there’s always room for improvement. In 2016, SVEC is aiming to beat its all-time record of 714 days without any employees missing time due to a work-related incident, a goal we should hit on Sept. 27. We’re also hoping to add to that a perfect vehicle safety record by eliminating the one accident in the books for 2015.

We also spent a good portion of the last year revising the cooperative’s safety manual to comply with current OSHA, NESC and DOT standards.

Throughout 2016, SVEC will make sure everyone is trained to the new standards.

“We’ll be making sure any employee questions are answered and that everyone understands what’s changed and what hasn’t,” says Mosley.

“There’s a lot to do, but it’s necessary to ensure employees get the job done and do it right. Members may only see us building lines, but there’s so much more that goes into preparing employees to get there.”

Helping our members

Open communication with members is one of the cornerstones of any cooperative, and at SVEC our member services team takes pride in being that first point of contact whenever there’s a question or problem.

Last year, SVEC made a big push to promote new programs that give our members more control over their electrical usage. The MyChoice

prepaid metering and SmartHub programs have seen increased participation, giving households the option to plan a more reliable budget, avoid monthly bills and track their energy use every day.

This year, the aim is to make our site an even better resource for our members.

“Right now we’re using Facebook a good bit to stay in touch with people, but we want to start making our Web page a little more interactive,” says John Robinson, director of member services.

SVEC is also aiming for a One-Stop Member Service philosophy. Whether members get in touch with us via phone, fax, Internet or face-toface, we want to do everything we can to answer your question or solve your problem in a single contact. That way you can get back to the things that are most important in your life.

Planning for the future

SVEC isn’t a utility that was founded to make a profit, and we don’t answer to a board of shareholders who make decisions based on money.

We’re here to serve our neighbors with reliable and affordable electricity — and that requires in-

telligent financial planning.

Administrative services takes the lead on those matters, in addition to keeping an eye on things like accounting, human resources and the warehouse. As the department transitioned to a new accounting manager, SVEC continued to thrive, even navigating through the application process for a Rural Utilities Service loan. “We’re always building, repairing, and maintaining our plant, and it takes money to do that,” says Vicky Talmadge, director of administrative services.

We are currently building a master financial plan. This plan will outline the Board of Trustees financial requirements for SVEC, therefore giving management and the accounting department a roadmap to follow. This financial plan, along with a defined plan for managing our fleet, will be completed in 2016. “These plans will also help with strategically planning for the future,” Talmadge says. “The clear communication between Trustees, management and accounting builds a stronger financial structure for SVEC.” 

The Suwannee County Board of County Commissioners stands with SVEC linemen after adopting a resolution to name April 11 National Lineman Appreciation Day throughout the county. Front, from left to right: Alex Fountain, Craig Ragan, James Humphrey, Jared Clark, Andy Lawrence and James Black. Back, from left to right: Larry Sessions, Clyde Fleming, Jason Bashaw, Ricky Gamble and Wesley Wainright.

SVEC EMPLOYEE ATTENDS NEXT GENERATION

LEADERSHIP COURSE

Congratulations to SVEC’s Manger of Accounting Christine Moor, who attended the first Next Generation Leaders program at this year’s NRECA annual meeting.

The program gathered promising employees from across the country to learn more about the impact of member-owned electric utilities and prepare them to lead the nation’s cooperative network into the future.

Christine Moor