Happy New Year from EnerStar! With the new year, there are many ongoing projects and a few changes happening at the co-op. One significant change is the appointment of a new Chief Executive Officer.

With Dave Clinton’s retirement as CEO on Nov. 1, 2024, I am excited to introduce myself as the newly appointed CEO. Having worked at EnerStar for over 35 years, I have enjoyed getting to know many of you. For those who may not know me, my experience in the cooperative sector is diverse, as I have served in various roles within our not-for-profit cooperative. 

I graduated from Indiana State University and completed the National Rural Electric Cooperative’s Management Internship Program at the University of Wisconsin in 2016. Throughout my career, I have engaged in ongoing co-op training and served on committees at the state and national levels. 

I am passionate about the co-op business model and look forward to continuing to serve our membership in this new capacity. Our dedicated team of co-op employees is equally dedicated to fulfilling the cooperative’s mission of providing our members with safe, reliable and affordable power.

The timing was such that when I was transitioning into this new role, I received the results of our most recent member survey, conducted by our statewide association. I thought that would be a perfect topic for my first article. 

We are incredibly grateful for the feedback from our members. We are fortunate to have such an engaged community, and the survey provides us with valuable benchmarks. It helps us identify what we are doing well and highlights areas to improve.

Our core goal is to provide our membership with reliable electric service. EnerStar achieved an 87% score for delivering reliable electric service and for restoring service quickly after an outage. While these are strong numbers, it is important to point out that a major initiative underway, installing a new metering system, will significantly improve this performance indicator.

Our current metering system has exceeded its expected lifespan and has helped the co-op save money. However, it now needs an update due to software compatibility issues and challenges in sourcing replacement parts. The new metering system offers numerous benefits, with two key advantages regarding outage restoration:

Improved reliability. The new metering system will deliver enhanced data like power quality reporting. It will allow us to identify hazards or weak spots and detect blinks before they can lead to outages, thus improving electric reliability.

Outage restoration and communications. The new metering system will communicate wirelessly instead of using power lines. This upgrade allows crews to quickly assess the scale of outages and respond more efficiently if your power goes out. Additionally, it will enhance outage communications for members using our SmartHub app.

Another survey section I want to highlight is member service, which relates back to my comment about our dedicated team of employees. Our membership rated EnerStar highly in several key areas:

• Knowledgeable/competent employees
• Friendly/courteous employees
• Communicates effectively
• Makes it easy to do business with the co-op
• Committed to local communities
• The co-op is honest and transparent

Thank you to our members for recognizing the hard work of our dedicated employees who consistently go above and beyond. While we may be one of the smaller not-for-profit electric cooperatives in Illinois, we are mighty and serving our members is our #1 priority!