Steven Johnson is a staff writer at NRECA. NRECA economists compiled the data from a variety of sources, including filings with the Rural Utilities Service. “For a service few could live without, electricity is a real bargain.” “Adjusted for inflation, the total increase has been only $19 or 1.5% per year,” NRECA analysts said. Typical monthly residential electric bills for co-op customers are only up $56 since 2000. In constant dollars, the average monthly bill in 2014 was about $100, compared with $81 in 2000. The result: electricity remains a good value in Co-op Nation. For the second year in a row, the overall inflation rose slightly to 1.6 percent, NRECA said, below the Federal Reserve Bank’s target rate of 2 percent. It also helped that inflation has remained low. Residential sales grew by 3.2 percent overall but commercial and industrial sales grew even more in 2014-nearly 5 percent, the NRECA Strategic Analysis Unit said. Nationally, co-op serve about 42 million people.Įconomic conditions: The rural economy has struggled to get back to its pre-recession levels, but there are signs that it is picking up in co-op territory. Particularly noteworthy: four North Dakota co-ops made the top 10 ranking, based on consumer growth due to oil and gas activity in the Bakken formation. Still, it was above the national average for the industry as a whole, and 84 percent of all co-ops experienced a net increase in customer growth in 2014. That was an increase of less than 1 percent, and well below the robust 2.8 percent annual average that co-ops enjoyed from 1974 to 2007. New customers: Co-op Nation welcomed 170,864 new members in 2014. Milder weather prevailed throughout the rest of the year, but the early damage sparked co-op sales. “The amount of damage we have here is equal to Hurricane Hugo,” said David Felkel, president and CEO of Edisto Electric Cooperative in Bamberg, South Carolina, after one storm.
Now in its ninth year, the study measures customer satisfaction among business customers with their gas utility company in four. An arctic blast brought the coldest weather in decades to hundreds of electric cooperative territories, keeping line crews in many areas busy restoring power. Customer satisfaction among commercial businesses with their gas utilities improved from 2013, driven by increases in proactive communication, according to the JD Power 2014 Gas Utility Business Customer Satisfaction Study.
Weather: Demand received a strong boost in early 2014 as a polar vortex gripped parts of the country. Why the boost in a utility segment that represents many poorer, rural parts of the United States? NRECA analysts point to three factors: This was especially true in 20 when co-op sales growth outpaced the industry as a whole by wide margins,” the analysis unit said in its annual Vital Signs report, available to registered users of , “Co-op sales growth rates generally surpass that of the total electric utility industry as a whole.
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