Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas
Buddy Hasten is CEO of the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas.
The National Rural Electric Cooperative's PowerXchange is the largest gathering in the nation of cooperative leaders. Public Utilities Fortnightly brings you excerpts of an online CEO talk with NRECA's Jim Matheson, Middle Tennessee Electric's Chris Jones, Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas' Buddy Hasten, and Kansas Electric Power Cooperative's Suzanne Lane.
Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas CEO Buddy Hasten: Our mission is to be reliable, affordable, and responsible. Everything we do focuses on that and our core values. I want to talk about some of the challenges we're facing to be reliable for our members, especially the supply chain constraints.
In many cases, people believe that with COVID, the supply chains fell down, that the supply of the products was no longer there, the empty shelves. When we say that we're constrained and we can't get access to critical equipment to maintain the electric grid, that's what you would assume.
But I've been a part of a team that has spent a better part of the year researching that. What we found is the supply really hasn't fallen off. A lot of these manufacturers are producing the same amounts they always were, but demand has skyrocketed.