Central Electric’s Year in Review

While change is constant, Central Electric Cooperative’s mission stays the same every year: deliver our members safe, clean, reliable electricity at the lowest possible rates.

This year, CEC’s most significant change was saying goodbye to former President and CEO Dave Markham, who retired after 26 years of dedicated service.

Stepping into this role in July, my goal was simple: to ensure a seamless transition dedicated to carrying out CEC’s mission while positioning the cooperative to be successful in a rapidly evolving industry.

Key Highlights

Strategic investment initiative. CEC is in the middle of a decade-long capital improvement plan to strengthen and upgrade our infrastructure.

A prime example is the ongoing work to increase the capacity of our 3.5-mile transmission line from the Bonneville Power Administration’s Redmond Substation to CEC’s Cline Falls Substation in Eagle Crest.

Initially built in the 1950s, the 69-kilovolt line is being converted to a 115-kV line to meet the increasing demand for electricity while enhancing safety, reliability and resiliency for our communities.

From 2017 until the end of this year, CEC will have replaced 1,682 aging poles, buried 26 miles of cable in conduit and upgraded five substations to meet anticipated future members’ energy demands.

Wildfire mitigation. Vegetation management is essential to wildfire mitigation, requiring crews to patrol, identify, trim or remove overgrowth and hazard trees that pose a risk to power lines in rights-of-way throughout high-risk wildfire areas.

This year’s efforts occurred along Highway 126 west of Redmond and a section of the Brooks-Scanlon Logging Road outside Sisters. Tree trimming contractors eliminated 150 juniper trees in a 3-mile stretch adjacent to the highway. In the Sisters area, they removed a mix of 300 junipers and pines in 10 miles of rights-of-way.

Combating rising costs. Maintaining a high level of service and delivering affordable power to members has its challenges. The rising cost of energy, inflation and ongoing capital improvements required CEC to implement rate changes effective January 2024. To learn more, see pages 4-5.

Looking ahead, CEC and other consumer-owned utilities are negotiating with BPA on a new 20-year, post-2028 contract, asking BPA to provide more options to help CEC provide you with the lowest-cost power.

I take confidence in members’ support as expressed in the member satisfaction survey conducted earlier this summer. You gave the cooperative an overall satisfaction score of 90%, with high marks in providing member benefits of system reliability and residential rates significantly lower than the local investor-owned utility.

As the new year brings change and unexpected challenges, you can rely on CEC and its employees to consistently put members’ needs first.

Brad Wilson

President and CEO