Thanks to the cooperative structure, we don’t answer to investors or shareholders. Instead, we answer to you, our member-owners. As such, we think it’s important that you know exactly how your dollars are spent when you pay your monthly electricity bill.
The easiest way to do this is by breaking down the percentage of where each dollar goes from our members.
By far, our biggest expense as a cooperative is the cost of purchasing power and is one of the areas where we have seen the biggest upward pressures on price. However, when we work collectively to lower our energy use on high-demand days, we can lower our wholesale power costs as well. Then, all of our dollars will go further as a result.
Our other costs help us effectively run our cooperative. Our top priority is to provide our members with safe and reliable power. To do this, we spend money to maintain the power grid, restore power during outages, offer member services and return capital credits to our members. We also account for interest, taxes, depreciation and the administrative costs of running our co-op.
Every portion of every dollar spent is an investment in our members and is approved by our board of directors. At a time when it feels like we’re all getting less for more, we hope you feel confident that Piedmont Electric is working to make your dollar go further. We truly thank you for being a member.
*Based on our 2021 annual report