Looking ahead — managing costs, serving our members

As Chair­man of York Elec­tric Cooperative’s board of trustees, I want to speak direct­ly to you, our mem­bers, about your co-op’s rate increase. In the last issue, we announced that the board of trustees, after sig­nif­i­cant delib­er­a­tion and dis­cus­sion, unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed on a rate adjust­ment. For over a decade, your co-op has main­tained sta­ble rates by man­ag­ing costs and mak­ing wise busi­ness choic­es. As new rates are imple­ment­ed for next month’s pow­er use, we want to con­tin­ue our record of trans­paren­cy on the fac­tors that led to this deci­sion and reit­er­ate the steps we are tak­ing to min­i­mize its impact on you.

Under­stand­ing the rate change

In 2024, we learned that YEC’s own pow­er bill from our whole­sale pow­er sup­pli­ers would increase by 11%. To min­i­mize the effect of these costs on our mem­bers, York Elec­tric has absorbed about half the impact by care­ful­ly man­ag­ing our expens­es while main­tain­ing strong equi­ty. Still, we can­not ful­ly absorb these ris­ing whole­sale pow­er prices through cost-cut­ting. Accord­ing­ly, begin­ning in Feb­ru­ary, mem­bers’ rates will increase by 6%. Even after this adjust­ment, YEC will still offer one of the low­est elec­tric rates in the area and in our state.

Fac­tors dri­ving costs high­er

Since May 2024, we have report­ed on the esca­lat­ing chal­lenges we face, includ­ing ris­ing mate­r­i­al costs, which are up more than 70% since 2019. Increased inter­est rates and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions regard­ing pow­er gen­er­a­tion have fur­ther strained our cost of doing busi­ness. Like all South Car­oli­na elec­tric coop­er­a­tives, YEC pur­chas­es elec­tric­i­ty through long-term con­tracts with sup­pli­ers such as Duke Ener­gy and San­tee Coop­er. Our rates are dri­ven in large part by the price of whole­sale pow­er from those sup­pli­ers. Those whole­sale prices are going up.

In par­tic­u­lar, we will see sig­nif­i­cant cost increas­es arise due to the end of a court-agreed San­tee Coop­er rate freeze on Dec. 31, 2024. Start­ing in 2025, San­tee Coop­er customers—including YEC members—will begin pay­ing for the unbud­get­ed, extra costs that San­tee Coop­er incurred dur­ing its four-year rate freeze peri­od, when the util­i­ty wasn’t allowed to raise its rates to cov­er those costs.

We don’t know exact­ly how much co-op mem­bers will have to pay for these new costs, but we expect it to be substantial—into the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars. These charges will come on top of San­tee Cooper’s oth­er planned rate increas­es, which will help it meet the ris­ing prices for fuel and mate­ri­als.

Mov­ing for­ward togeth­er

In the face of these chal­lenges, our team and our board are com­mit­ted to advo­cat­ing for the best out­comes for our mem­bers by work­ing with our trust­ed part­ners, our fel­low coop­er­a­tives and our elect­ed offi­cials. We will con­tin­ue to pos­i­tive­ly impact the lives of our mem­bers by look­ing out for you and pro­vid­ing reli­able, safe and afford­able ener­gy.

Although 2024 came with its chal­lenges, your board of trustees is proud to share in our note­wor­thy accom­plish­ments made last year by our team of out­stand­ing employ­ees.

Thank you for your trust, your under­stand­ing and your com­mit­ment to your co-op.