Peace River Electric Cooperative celebrated a milestone on Saturday March 21, 2015 – we celebrated our 75th anniversary at our Annual Meeting! A lot has changed since the early days of the cooperative. At our meeting we reflected on how far we’ve come through advanced technology and equipment since 1940.

One example that stuck out to me and how it relates to today is about meters. Members were responsible for reading their own electric meter and then mailing in their readings. Whereas today, advances in technology allow meters to be read remotely. Members were notified of co-op of outages through a party line and today dispatchers are aware of outages before the member through the use of AMI technology. Poles were once set by hand are now installed using digger derrick trucks. Paper, pencils and ledgers have now been replaced with software, computers, tablets and phones.

But not everything in the cooperative has changed, some things have stayed the same over the past 75 years. The seven Cooperative Principles that guided us in the early days still guide our cooperative today and our commitment to deliver safe, reliable electric service at the lowest possible cost is as strong today. While our implementation is in the early stages, we know our members will be well served with the iVUE® solutions we are implementing today and the technology NISC will continue to develop in the future.