We have all come through another holiday season, and more and more people buy their gifts online and have them delivered each year. While I personally prefer to shop in the store so I can handle the product before I make a purchase, the convenience and value of ordering online and having it shipped directly to my house is hard to beat. Companies like UPS have transformed how our society thinks about shopping and in the process have improved the lives of millions.
It’s also a great example of how your local electric cooperative works. Clark County REMC is like the UPS of the electric grid. We don’t generate electricity. We deliver it. When you “order” electricity by flipping the light switch or turning on the TV, we deliver it to you. And since we handle the billing for generating and delivering the power, it can be easy to forget that some costs are simply out of our control. For example, natural gas prices are 30% higher than 2 years ago, and the cost of solar energy has nearly doubled over the same period.
When you pay your REMC bill, on average, ⅔ goes straight to our power supplier, Hoosier Energy, to pay for the electricity. The other ⅓ is used locally to pay for the poles, wires, and other equipment, to prepare for and respond to storms of all types, and to support and equip our employees so you always receive the best possible service.
At the local level, we do all we can to control costs by delaying projects, reusing available space, and finding efficiencies wherever possible. We can’t completely offset the rising cost of power, but we have been cutting where we can to limit the impact on your family’s budget.