Reliable power, inflation, supply chain disruptions, and severe weather events were topics of discussion at Midwest Electric’s 87th annual meeting held at St. Marys Memorial High School on the evening of June 6. Over 900 members, family, and guests attended and enjoyed bucket truck rides, dinner buffet, kids games, bounce houses, a health fair, and more.

Karlie Lucas of New Bremen was the winner of the $1,000 scholarship drawing, and numerous members won a total of $2,000 in cash prizes.  

Director election results were announced with each candidate  serving a three-year term on the board:

• Ann Selhost (District 2: Allen and Putnam counties)
• Roger Rank (District 3: Van Wert county),
• Gary Knapke (District 4: Mercer and Darke counties) 

Members also approved the board’s requested changes to the Code of Regulations.

CEO Matt Berry discussed the cooperative’s load shed plan for the upcoming power grid blackouts. He said the blackouts will affect all utilities, not just Midwest Electric. They will occur because of government regulations that have forced the premature shutdown of reliable carbon-based power plants, Berry said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is mandating carbon capture technology that doesn’t work on a large scale and is highly inefficient, thereby forcing utilities to just shut down their plants rather than try to comply, Berry said. He added that a number of lawsuits have been filed against the EPA, along with legislative efforts to try to restore common sense regulations.

Because of the seriousness of the matter, Kevin Zemanek also talked about the EPA.  Zemanek, assistant vice president for Buckeye Power (our power supplier), said the latest EPA rule “is affecting the ability of all utilities to produce an adequate and reliable supply of electricity generation to meet the ever-growing demand for electricity, and causing significant increases in costs.

“The premature closing of power plants without a reliable way to replace that lost power generation has weakened the electric power system and increased our risk of widespread power outages during extreme weather events,” Zemanek said.

Board President Jim Wiechart told members that the cooperative recently created a new, four-year construction work plan to invest $12 million in reliability improvements to our local distribution system. This includes increasing the co-op’s “backfeeding” capabilities between substations. He also mentioned the electric rate increase in 2023, the first distribution increase since 2010.

“It simply costs a rural utility more to provide electric service than the city-owned and larger utilities,” Wiechart said. “Still, our electric rates are amongst the lowest for Ohio’s 25 electric cooperatives and lower than the rates from AEP and AES.”

Watch the annual meeting by clicking below.