POWER LINES
years SERVING OUR MEMBERS
Electric cooperatives and their members see benefits of the statewide association. BY JEFF McCALLISTER
S
hortly after the first electric cooperatives formed in the 1930s, their leadership began to see some of the same challenges that small businesses everywhere face — chief among them being a lack of the buying power that larger companies enjoy. Co-ops needed supplies, equipment, insurance — in short, lots of products that larger companies pay less for because they buy them in bulk. The problem was most apparent in the co-ops’ main product: the electricity they provided to their members. Individual cooperatives had to purchase wholesale power from other utilities at whatever rate those utilities charged. The leaders of the co-ops started talking among themselves to find ways to negotiate better contracts to buy electricity, and they saw immediate benefits. It didn’t take long before they began to see real value in working together in other aspects of their business, as well. So, in 1941 — a little more than five years after Piquabased Pioneer Electric Cooperative set the first co-op pole in the nation, and 80 years ago this summer — co-ops officially formed a statewide trade association: Ohio Rural Electric Cooperatives. The most significant development to come from the association is undoubtedly the creation of Buckeye Power, a generation and transmission cooperative wholly owned by Ohio’s co-ops. In 2015, the two companies — the power generation co-op and the services co-op — united under one name: Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives. “The early cooperative leaders were dedicated to improving the lives of the people in their communities, and I marvel at the initiative and courage it took to make electrification happen,” says Pat O’Loughlin, president and CEO of Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives. “I also take note every day of the foresight those leaders had when they created this association and gave it the flexibility to evolve and meet challenges that they honestly couldn’t have dreamed of at the time.” In 1959, once the early leadership had well established that they could negotiate better power rates as a group, they soon realized that they had the means to produce the power themselves, and they established Buckeye Power. “Co-ops were at the mercy of AEP,” says Steve Nelson, CEO and general manager of Coshocton-based Frontier Power Company, one of 24 electric distribution
4 OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING • MAY 2021
