President/CEO & General Counsel
While the past year has necessitated many changes to ensure the health and safety of our members and employees, Todd-Wadena’s primary mission has remained the same. Throughout all the unknowns caused by the pandemic, we remain committed to providing our members with safe, reliable, and affordable electricity.
We have been busy at the Cooperative this past year – serving our members, maintaining infrastructure, adapting to changing rules and regulations, and constructing a new headquarters building. Here are a few 2020 accomplishments brought about because of the hard work and dedication of TWEC’s Board of Directors and staff:
- We held our first bifurcated Annual Meeting. The first part was a virtual Annual Meeting where we held our annual election, with a later event for business reports held at a drive-in movie theater.
- The new headquarters building was constructed with staff now operating out of our new facility. TWEC is also now serving its own electric demands.
- We completed a 4-Year Work Plan that included the replacement of 45.31 miles of line due to growth on the system, the addition of backfeed capability between substations, and the replacement of old lines that had reached the end of their useful life. Also included in the plan was 1.1 miles of new tie lines to address growth, replacement of the Blueberry Substation, an extension of service to 373 new residential consumer locations, and 480 service capacity increases.
- The cooperative interconnected six solar systems on our lines.
- The 2021-2024 Work Plan was developed and the Board of Directors approved it.
- TWEC rolled out HomeServe, dual fuel notifications, an adult scholarship to accompany the student scholarship, electric power tool rebates, a new logo and branding, a new website, an ETS water heating program, and a Choose Your Way-Prepay option for members.
- The ‘Sota Grown indoor food production container arrived and is now producing food.
- We developed a partnership for secondary locating services with Johnson Locating to serve our membership.
- Todd-Wadena paid out $848,000 in capital credits to members. This includes capital credit retirements from 2005 and part of 2006 from TWEC, and credits from 1987 from our wholesale energy provider, Great River Energy.
We are proud of what we accomplished for our membership in 2020 and are excited for the new year ahead of us!
