“Economic development is a huge factor in fiber deployment. Our cooperative is serving one Microsoft data center and are in the process of serving three more. You don’t attract those kinds of loads without a sound, highly reliable fiber network.”

“We are seeing lead times of up to a year for critical materials such as transformers, meter sockets, wire, and some hardware, with some lead times on other non-critical material reaching 70 weeks. This requires our salespeople to engage with customers in planning ahead and ordering early.”

“Direct Pay could be transformational for electric cooperatives and give them the opportunity to make significant investments in these emerging technologies.”

Almost 8,000 attended NRECA's 2022 Annual Meeting, now called PowerXchange.

Russia’s brutal aggression has reversed German attitudes and policy perhaps. Germans are increasingly realizing that they must balance the transformation to net zero with the other imperatives of energy systems, those being reliability, affordability, and national security.