Finding Good Answers
Branko Terzic is a managing director at Berkeley Research Group, and a nonresident senior fellow of Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. He served as a commissioner at FERC and on the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. He also served as CEO of Yankee Energy System, Inc.
America’s electric cooperatives are frequently overlooked when it comes to debates about the future of electric policy. However, the nation’s eight hundred and sixty-four electric distribution cooperatives serve twelve percent of electric consumers and deliver ten percent of the nation’s electric energy.
To provide this service they have built forty-two percent of the nation’s electric distribution lines, which cover seventy-five percent of the country’s geography. Their responsibility is to deliver adequate, reliable and reasonably priced electric service to their members, who are geographically widely dispersed. No easy task.