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It’s often said that bigger is better, and there’s some evidence to support that when you look at Ohio’s contributions to the “world’s largest” things.
We all know deep down, though, that bigger is not always better. Take your electric cooperative as an example. By electric utility standards, cooperatives are pretty small. But with that comes local control and accountability to your community that are hard to find in large corporations. The people who serve on the board that governs your cooperative and the employees who work there are all part of your community. That helps them to be responsive to their members’ needs, and it positions your cooperative to be better able to respond quickly, when needed.
But what about the advantages of being big? Shouldn’t large utilities be able to use their size and purchasing power to better manage costs? Ohio’s electric cooperatives recognized long ago that to keep costs down, some things are better done on a larger scale. That’s why the 25 electric cooperatives providing service in Ohio banded together to form Buckeye Power back in 1959 — to be able to produce electricity at a lower cost. Buckeye has also partnered with other utilities on projects through the years to gain even greater economies of scale. That’s both helped us keep our costs down and allowed us to invest in state-of-the-art environmental control equipment to keep our environmental footprint as small as we can.
Cooperatives around the country have jointly formed other service organizations — information technology companies, liability insurance and financing organizations, even telecommunications providers — and these strategic partnerships also help us keep costs down, because we know that bigger is NOT better when it comes to your electric bill.
Buckeye Power provides affordable generation and transmission services to your cooperative; your local electric cooperative provides reliable and affordable distribution services; and we all capitalize on the many cooperative partnerships. The goal is to keep costs down because at the end of the day, we’re accountable to you, our members.
