PRESS RELEASE
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for coming to our Annual Members’ Meeting. I can’t tell you how proud I am to be here. Because this year we are celebrating Southern Maryland Electric Co-op’s 70th anniversary.
To help us commemorate our 70th anniversary, we’ve invited Steve Larsen, an attorney and the Chairman of the Maryland Public Service Commission, to make a few remarks. Mr. Larsen has had an extensive public service career. This past March, he was appointed by Governor Martin O’Malley as Chairman of the Maryland PSC. Mr. Larsen served for six years as Maryland’s Insurance Commissioner from 1997-2003, and he also served in legislative roles in the administrations of Governor Parris Glendening and Governor William Donald Schaefer. Please join me in welcoming Mr. Steve Larsen.
-- Remarks by Steve Larsen ---
Mr. Larsen, thank you for coming.
As I said, SMECO was formed 70 years ago, and we’ve been going strong ever since.
In 1937, SMECO started with $165,000 to build 175 miles of line to serve 600 families in Southern Maryland. Many of you know the co-op story: our history of serving our customer-members, of bringing electricity to customers, safely, reliably, and at a reasonable cost.
Since 1937, average electric use has increased by almost 2,000 percent. Customers require energy for things that were unimaginable 70 years ago.
To serve our customers and meet their need for energy, we have an annual construction budget of 40 million dollars to build new substations and power lines to serve new homes and businesses.
We must invest in the co-op to keep our commitments to our customer-members.
One of those commitments is to be responsive to your needs today, while planning for the needs of the next generation, and that includes green initiatives. In the next few years, we will dedicate 3½ percent of our power portfolio to purchasing renewable energy.
Our green initiatives are built on a tradition of energy conservation that includes programs designed to help our customers. You can take advantage of SMECO’s Energy Star Home program for new homes, or the PowerWise program for older homes. Just call on our energy efficiency professionals; they want to help you save money.
In addition to energy conservation, we are exploring more programs that can help customers control their costs: time-of-use rates that work in conjunction with our power purchasing program, and smart meters that use technology to influence energy-use habits.
Technology provides powerful tools, and we have invested in these tools to be more responsive to our customer-members.
Several years ago, we implemented an online billing and payment system that is used by over 40,000 customers every month; they save time and money by paying bills online, and so do we.
We installed an outage management system that helps us restore your power more quickly. And now we have a mobile workforce management system that sends and receives information between our offices and our field personnel so we can get to you faster.
We invest in technology to serve you, construction to get power to you, and infrastructure to keep your power reliable.
What is reliable power? It’s having lights at the flick of a switch. It’s having heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. It’s having a clean, well-lit operating room in a hospital.
Reliable power means lights in the stadium, gas at the pump, and cash at the ATM. It’s cold beer in the fridge and hot water in the tub.
Reliable power requires an investment in people, equipment, and materials. As I mentioned earlier, SMECO invests about 40 million dollars a year for construction.
These costs are included in the distribution charge on your monthly bill. SMECO went to the Public Service Commission last May with a request to adjust that distribution charge. That was not an easy step for us to take.
It’s been 13 years since our last rate change and we’ve kept it to a minimum. We expect the average customer bill to go up by about $5.75 a month.
We know that the changing rates in the energy market have affected our customers. But, we needed to take action to keep the co-op financially sound and to meet our obligations.
We’ve also been working hard to hold the line on the standard offer service rate. Our method of purchasing power has captured the attention of other utilities, and the officials we work with here in Maryland have praised our portfolio technique.
We’re looking out for you and doing our best to control the cost of energy. We’ve always been up-front about costs and given you straight talk so you would know what we’re facing. In the September issue of your monthly newsletter, you’ll see an article about a cost that we’re trying to fight.
It’s a complicated issue, but in a nutshell, we have to pay to transmit power to our area, and we have to pay ten times more this year than we did last year. Our cost to receive power has gone from 4 million dollars to 48 million dollars. We feel this is an unfair burden for our customer-members to bear. And we’re taking this issue to the federal government.
Your co-op is making a difference because we are different. Our customers are our owners, and our owners are our customers. By focusing on our customers’ best interest, SMECO has enjoyed success and progress while many companies have not.
Last month, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley came here to our headquarters, and he recognized us for keeping our commitments to our customer-members.
We showed him that our mission is to provide excellent service at a reasonable cost. Our business is not about profits; it’s about service, it’s about reliability. And as long as we keep our focus on our customers, we’ll keep going strong for another 70 years.
Thank you for coming tonight. And thank you for 70 years of cooperative success.