The year 2020 was a difficult, frustrating, and rewarding year. The COVID-19 Pandemic affected every sector of our lives from how we shop, to where we work, even how we worship.  We experienced mandated quarantines, store closures, and isolation from loved ones in hospitals and nursing homes.  It was a difficult and frustrating year, but like the saying goes, “Every cloud has it’s silver lining” - 2020 also had moments of silver linings.  Travel restrictions which shut down automobile and air travel led to cleaner air in most cities. Quarantines brought families together for meals and game nights. Isolation from loved ones reminded us how precious those relationships can be.

 

Around the Lane-Scott Electric Cooperative, the year 2020 was not a favorite, but considering your cooperative has weathered global and regional wars, depression, inflation, countless political swings, and the great Dust Bowl, we did okay. 

 

The lockdowns, travel restrictions, and quarantines slowed oil and gas production nationally. Like most rural cooperatives in Kansas, oil and gas production constitute a large amount of Lane-Scott’s electrical load. The financial impact on your cooperative was that total revenue fell to $16,137,299.  This is a $1,689,809 (or 9.5%) loss in sales, with Commercial and Industrial accounts representing 98% of our losses.  Lane-Scott is used to running lean, so we tightened our belts, deferred capital investments, and finished the year with $488,304 in total margins. 

 

Despite COVID-19, your electric cooperative remains financially strong. 

• • • Equity as a percent of assets is 36.55%, 6.45% above our 10-year average.
    • Our current and accrued assets exceeded liabilities by 2.5 to 1.

As a non-profit electric utility, your Board of Trustees strives to keep our rates among the lowest in Kansas. Lane-Scott Electric Cooperative rates averaged 10.17 cents per kilowatt-hour (₵ per kWh) in 2020.  Residential Rates averaged 11.41₵ per kWh; that is 16.65% below the 2020 Kansas electric cooperative average residential rate of 13.69₵ per kWh.  A Lane-Scott member using 908 kWh/month would pay an average of $103.60 per month or $1,243.23 per year.  Lane-Scott’s members saved an average of $248.43 per year over the average Kansas Electric Cooperative residential rates.  In fact, only three (3) of the 29 electric cooperatives in Kansas had lower residential rates.

 

As I have said before, “You can’t talk about Rates without talking about Reliability.”

During the pandemic of 2020, we built over $1.4 million in infrastructure, always improving, always keeping an eye on what we can do to improve your system reliability. These investments are paying off.  Our Average Service Availability Index has improved to 99.97%.  Meaning, on average, electricity is available when you need it 99.97% of the time.   

 

No one likes a power outage but sometimes it is simply a fact of life.  Know that whenever the power goes out, at whatever time, and in whatever weather the good Lord has decided to bless us with, your Lane-Scott Electric Cooperative linemen are on the job, restoring your light, your heat, and your security.

 

Working around and near utility grade electricity is dangerous. We remain focused on the safety of our employees, our members, and our communities.

• We hold monthly employee safety meetings and have invested thousands of dollars in equipment and training.  This includes CPR and AED training as well as pole-top rescues and basic first aid.
• We provide free Electrical Safety demonstrations for our first responders, in member workplaces, and throughout our communities.  
• Standard line clearances can put today’s modern agricultural equipment operators within fatal reach of thousands of volts of electricity.  With your help, we are identifying and raising power lines that could interfere with safe farming operations. 

 

One of our guiding Cooperative Principles is “Commitment to Community” and your electric cooperative is proud to serve the communities we call home.  In 2020, Lane-Scott began our Co-op Sharing Success Grant Program in partnership with Co-Bank, one of our financial institutions. As a customer of Co-Bank, we are able to provide grants to charitable organizations and causes in our local communities with a match contribution from Co-Bank.

 

Lane-Scott proudly supports local organizations through various donations – having contributed over $17,000.00 to our schools, fire departments, 4-H groups, continuing education scholarships for our youth, and veteran organizations, to name a few. We sponsored an annual food drive to help stock our food bank pantries, and sent holiday care packages to active military from our service territory.

 

Lane-Scott continues our support of our communities with Master Electrician and HVAC services.  We are expanding that support by offering Generac generators.  Our master servicemen are trained and ready to install and service your award-wining Generac today.

We will continue to investigate new technologies and efficiencies to keep your rates affordable and your reliability high.  We will also continue working with our friends and partners at Sunflower Electric to investigate and implement renewable energy options to protect our natural resources.

Despite the challenges of 2020, we were able to maintain low rates and high reliability. We took a few hits, as have so many individuals and businesses, but we were still able to expand our services and support our communities. I am honored to be part of the Lane-Scott Electric Cooperative family working alongside these great individuals, to serve you.

 

Richard McLeon, MBA

General Manager