CEO March Message - 2025
HCE has focused on preventive maintenance and pole change outs which have proven to be very effective in limiting our outages. We continue to strive for reliable and affordable energy.
WAPA and Basin, our electric generation providers, have both told us that HCE should expect increases to cost of power over the years to come. The financial pressures exerted by this rising cost of power continue to go up for HCE.
When HCE was first informed of our expected energy generation increase, it was supposed to be approximately 8% over three years. Now we have been informed that the cost impact on our cooperative is expected to average a 7% increase per year. The new kWh rate for each class of service at HCE will go into effect June 1, 2025. The new rate for irrigation accounts will go into effect on April 1, 2025.
If you need financial assistance, there are programs available to help with energy costs through HRDC and HCE Energy Assistance programs. More information can be found at here.
This decision was not made lightly by our Board of Trustees. We will continue to keep our cooperative cost as low as possible and will work to mitigate our raising cost of generated energy.