Greetings from the Operations Department at East-Central Iowa REC! We hope 2025 has started out great for everyone.

At ECI REC, our goal is to provide safe, reliable, and affordable electricity to our members. Looking back on 2024, we are very proud of the strides we made to strengthen our distribution system.

In 2023, we saw 28.2 outage minutes per member, which was our lowest ever recorded controllable outage minutes. In 2024, we hit another milestone and further lowered our controllable outage minutes per member to 21.5 minutes! This is an accomplishment that only happens with a lot of hard work and total commitment from everyone at ECI REC—and when Mother Nature behaves. Great job and thank you to all Cooperative employees and directors!

While 21.5 outage minutes is great, we are committed to continually improving our reliability. This pie chart provides a breakdown of 2024’s controllable outage minutes and outages that were not directly controllable, as well as outage causes.

ECI REC has already started working toward having a great 2025. As soon as the new year began, our crews were busy designing and staking projects, replacing poles, doing annual line inspections, and working on other maintenance projects. Our overhead construction contractor has begun working on 2025 Work Plan projects, and our tree contractor has begun trimming trees. Pole inspections and underground Work Plan projects will start when the frost leaves the ground. This work will continue throughout the year.

We’d like to thank all our members for being part of our Cooperative family! Your support enables us to keep making improvements to better serve you. As always, don’t hesitate to call with your electrical questions or to report any safety concerns.