Category: News

In mid-August, Claiborne Electric will begin using a new telephone system.

After the new system is implemented, members who call the office will choose from a menu of options, which will help direct calls to the appropriate place. Members will still be able to speak with a live Member Services Representative in a local office by pressing the “0” key on their phone.

One major change within the new telephone system is that MSRs will no longer be able to take payments by telephone. Members may make payments by telephone through an automated payment system by pressing “1” in the new telephone menu. Members will enter a Claiborne Electric account number and follow the automated prompts to make a payment in the new phone system. The new system protects personal and financial information.

As always, members may still make payments using a wide variety of methods, including in-person, by mail, through our free SmartHub app, online at www.our.coop, by automatic bank draft, or through payment systems at locations such as Wal-Mart, CVS, Dollar General, and Family Dollar. Payment options can be reviewed here.

Members may also report an outage by pressing “2” in the new system. This will allow members to report the outage directly to the dispatch center’s outage system.

Since January, we have been discussing resiliency and storm recovery planning through the use of an Emergency Reserve Fund, which will go into effect in the coming weeks.

As residents of north Louisiana, we all understand the year-round threat of extreme, damaging storms. Tornadoes, straight-line winds, tropical storms, ice storms, and even the occasional hurricane can cause millions of dollars in damage in a single day. As much as we wish we could control the weather and keep storms at bay, we know future harmful storms are inevitable.

In August of 2020, Hurricane Laura arrived in our service area as a category 1 hurricane and caused nearly $5.4 million in damage. We borrowed money to pay for that damage to our system, and we paid more than $237,000 in interest on that borrowed money.

Part of operating under the cooperative business model is that Claiborne Electric is not-for-profit. We only collect what is necessary to run the Co-op. We don’t have investors or shareholders; we are completely owned by and obligated to the members we serve. Each member pays their share of purchased power, along with the cost of operating and maintaining the Co-op each month.

When we borrow money after the fact to pay for storm recovery, there is a significant interest component in repaying those loans. That interest, like all costs of the Co-op, is eventually paid by every member along Claiborne Electric’s lines. Those costs end up in the rate you pay for electricity. Building an Emergency Reserve Fund will eliminate these interest charges and significantly reduce or eliminate our reliance on borrowed funds for storm recovery efforts.

In the next few weeks, members will see a line item on bills for this fund. The line item will be listed as Emergency Reserve Fund. For all residential accounts, members will contribute $2.50 per month. Small General Service accounts will contribute $5.00 per month, and Large General Service accounts will contribute $50.00 per month. The fund is not set up to be a permanent charge. The fund is set up to build slowly for 42 months, or until it reaches $3 million.

The current fund balance, along with any use of the funds from the previous year, will be stated in the Annual Report, which is distributed to members at the Annual Membership Meeting and made available on the Co-op’s website.

An Emergency Reserve Fund is an efficient way for members to jointly contribute to a fund that will provide a source of emergency funding when a storm happens. Ultimately, this fund will save members money and keep rates low by eliminating borrowed money and the interest associated with storm loans.

Planning for storms in advance and having a resiliency plan in place makes the Cooperative stronger and more prepared when inevitable storms occur. We believe this fund will help us responsibly deliver the best possible service to you, our members.

Some of our members (don’t worry – we won’t point anyone out) remember the days when penny candy actually cost a penny. Today, a penny won’t buy a piece of candy or most anything else. In fact, according to the United States Mint, the current cost to produce and distribute a penny is nearly four cents.

In the current time and economy, what will a penny purchase? With the lasting value of electricity, one cent will purchase the following:

·        More than 15 full charges for an iPhone

·        More than 10 hours of light from an efficient lightbulb

·        About two hours of television, depending on size and technology

·        Half an hour of work on an average desktop computer

Electricity is just about the only thing of value that can still be purchased for a penny. The cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity has risen slower than any other household commodity for decades, making the value of electricity about as good as it gets.

One kWh is equal to using 1,000 watts of electricity for 60 minutes. At Claiborne Electric, each kWh costs members about 12.5 cents, which is significantly lower than the state average (nearly 14 cents) and national average (nearly 18 cents). Members are only paying a few cents more for a kWh of electricity than 20 years ago. In comparison, think about the cost of eggs, bread, coffee, medicine, gasoline, or a vehicle 20 years ago compared to today. Where other goods and necessities have doubled, tripled, or even more in price, electricity has held its value and remained similar in price for many years.

Currently, Claiborne Electric’s members pay some of the lowest electric rates in the state. In the most recent rate comparison released by the Louisiana Public Service Commission, members using an average of 1,000 kWh per month were billed $127.80. In comparison, the same bill would be $143.33 for an Entergy customer, $150.97 for a SWEPCO customer, and $158.83 for a CLECO customer.

It is fortunate that electricity continues to hold such an excellent value, because the American appetite for electricity continues to grow. With electricity required for heating, cooling, lighting, cleaning, cooking, refrigeration, working, entertainment, transportation, and communication, there is barely a part of life that does not require electrification.

Electricity per kWh is not expensive, but homes and businesses require more and more kWh to run on a daily basis, even despite advancements in technology and energy efficiency. With the growing demand of electric power, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates Americans will use more than four billion kWh this year.

Clearly, energy consumption shows no signs of slowing down. We encourage members to remember the value electricity holds with each flip of a switch, press of a button, and charge of a phone. At Claiborne Electric, we are always looking out for members by working together to keep electric bills affordable and service reliable. For more information on lowering electric consumption and using energy more wisely, please contact a local Claiborne Electric office.

Claiborne Electric members set an Annual Meeting attendance record  at the 2025 meeting on June 7.

Thank you to the 1,650 members who attended today’s Annual Membership Meeting!

In today’s election for the District Two Board of Directors seat, Willie “Butch” Sensley won with 64% of the vote.

Prize winners are listed below and will be contacted early in the business week about how to accept prizes. Congratulations to all prize winners!

Prize winners are as follows:

WHITTON, JERRY – $5,000

LEWIS, LESLIE – $4,000

SENN, BOBBYE – $3,000

KROUSE, DON – $2,000

HAULCY, VERONICA – $1,000

Registration Card Prizes:

ELKHARASH, SALEM – $500 (Homer site)

WALTON, TONY – $500 (Farmerville site)

$100 gift card winners:

AMBROSE, JASON

ANDREWS, QUANIECE

BEASLEY, TROY

BOONE, JANE

BOWER, JAMES

BROWN, SHAWN

BURCH, TARA

CALLEN, SUZONNE

CHE, WENDY

DAVIDSON, JARROD

DUNN, TAYLOR

ELKINS, LARRY

EVANS, TIFFANY

FERRINGTON, DARRAN

FRANKLIN, WES

FULLER, CHRIS

GIPSON, EUGENE (JR)

HEARN, VON

HIGHTOWER, CHRIS

HILL, SHERONDA

HODGE, ROBERT

HOLLIS, DANIEL

JONES, TAMMY

KALSTONE, ELLEN

LEWIS, ROBERT

MARDIS, CHRISTOPHER

MCCLINTON, HASKELL

MCGEE, STEPHANIE

MEDLIN, RONALD

NATION, ELAINE

PATTERSON, ROBERT

PERRITT, LORENZ

PHILLIPS, JAMIE

REDDEN, TERRY

REEVES, MICHAEL

RHODES, MELISSA

ROBINSON, EVA

SANDERS, PEGGY

SIMMONS, ROBERT

SIMPSON, ROGER

SIMPSON, SCOTT

SMITH, KEITH

TURNER, TINA

UNION VILLAGE, LLC

WADE, GLENN

WAINWRIGHT, ANGELA

WATLEY, SARAH

WILSON, STEPHEN

WOOD, LINDA

YEATS, SHARON

Claiborne Electric will host a drive-through Annual Meeting on June 7.

The Co-op will have two sites available for members to register – one at Claiborne Electric’s headquarters office (12525 Hwy. 9 in Homer), and one at D’Arbonne Woods Charter School (9560 Hwy. 33 in Farmerville). Members can drive through a multi-lane site in either location to register for the meeting, be entered for all prize drawings, cast a ballot for the District Two Director seat, and receive the 2024 Annual Report. Drive-through registration will take place from 9 a.m. until noon.

At each location, members will drive in and remain in their vehicles through the registration process. Claiborne Electric employees will be directing members to lanes. After members finish registering, they will be directed to the exit.

For the registration process to flow smoothly, members are asked to bring the registration card they received by mail to the meeting. Members who bring their registration card will be entered into a drawing for a $500 gift card.

The top portion of the registration card will serve as the voting ballot for the District Two Director seat. All members who register for the meeting will be able to cast a ballot to elect Incumbent Willie “Butch” Sensley or Nominee Benjamin Walton to represent District Two on Claiborne Electric’s Board of Directors. Members are urged to bring the registration card in its entirety to the Annual Meeting. Ballots will be marked and detached from the registration card along a perforated line, ensuring a private vote. Members will cast ballots in locked boxes, and the registration portion will be collected for the prize drawing. Election information can be found in the news section at www.our.coop.

Several cash prizes will be awarded after the conclusion of the meeting. Members who participate will be eligible for cash prizes of $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, and a grand prize of $5,000. Names will also be drawn for 50 $100 cash prizes. All prizes will be drawn after the conclusion of the meeting, and winners will be posted online and contacted directly.

Members are urged to have their registration card and photo ID ready to present upon arrival. The primary member on the account must be the one to register and present identification. If a spouse will attend the meeting without the primary member, both spouses must visit a Claiborne Electric office before the Annual Meeting to form a Joint Membership. With a Joint Membership, either spouse can present ID and represent that membership at the meeting.

An organization that is a member of the Co-op may designate a person to attend the meeting to register on behalf of the organization. At registration, that person will need to present a letter on the organization’s letterhead, signed by the leader of the organization, naming them as the representative.

Please participate in the 2025 Annual Meeting on June 7!

OFFICIAL NOTICE OF ANNUAL MEETING

Claiborne Electric’s drive-through Annual Membership Meeting will be held June 7, 2025.

The theme for this year’s meeting is “The Future has Never Been Brighter.” With our return to a cooperative business model in our new wholesale power contract with 1803 Electric Cooperative, we believe Claiborne Electric’s future is brighter than ever. This new partnership will benefit members and the Cooperative as we continue providing safe, reliable, and affordable electric service and meeting the needs of our members.

The Co-op will host the meeting between two sites – one at Claiborne Electric’s headquarters office (12525 Hwy. 9 in Homer), and one at D’Arbonne Woods Charter School (9560 Hwy. 33 in Farmerville). The meeting will run from 9 a.m. until noon in each location.

This year’s meeting will include an election for the Director who will represent Claiborne Electric’s District Two. Incumbent Willie Sensley, Jr. of Farmerville and Benjamin Walton of Bernice were each nominated and qualified to run for the District Two seat. The director for this district will be decided by a vote of all members attending the Annual Membership. Election ballots will be delivered by mail to members in May. They will be a perforated attachment on members’ Official Registration cards. Members are asked to have ballots filled out on arrival to help the registration process to flow smoothly.

All members who participate in the meeting will receive a gift from the Co-op and be entered for several cash and gift card prizes. Prizes will include:

• $5,000 cash grand prize
• $4,000 cash prize
• $3,000 cash prize
• $2,000 cash prize
• $1,000 cash prize
• 50 $100 gift cards

Member bills contain a section called “Current Service Detail” where charges for the billing period are listed as line items, then totaled on the bottom line.

The following explanations are an effort to help members better understand the components in this section.

For many years, the section of the bill listing charges contained a single line item called the Energy Charge. This line represented all costs associated with receiving power from Claiborne Electric. In an effort to increase transparency and line the billing language up with the tariffs approved by the Louisiana Public Service Commission, the Energy Charge has been broken into “Net Monthly Rate” and “Power Cost Adjustment” on bills.

Net Monthly Rate is the line item that includes the monthly service charge and the energy charge. The monthly service charge is the fixed monthly fee that covers the cost of being connected to Claiborne Electric’s system. This charge helps cover expenses such as electric metering, maintenance, billing, and payment processing – monthly functions that do not fluctuate with a member’s energy usage. The energy charge is the portion of a member’s bill that is associated with the expenses of operating the Cooperative each month. This charge is calculated per kilowatt-hour, and is a little more than three cents per kilowatt-hour.

The next line item, the Power Cost Adjustment, is based on the wholesale power contract between Claiborne electric and our power provider – 1803 Electric Cooperative. This line item is the bulk of a member’s cost for electricity. This charge represents the cost of generating power on a monthly basis, and is also calculated per kilowatt-hour. This charge varies slightly from month to month and is driven by the price of the fuels used to generate the electricity purchased by the co-op. The Power Cost Adjustment is typically around eight cents per kilowatt-hour.

Members who have questions about bills are urged to speak with one of our Member Service Representatives by calling our Homer office at (318)927-3504 or our Farmerville office at (318)368-3011.

We have developed the following graphic to help members understand the line items on their bills.

Meet the Candidate Questionnaire
Claiborne Electric Cooperative Board of Directors
District Two Election
June 7, 2025

In January, two Claiborne Electric members were nominated and qualified to represent District Two on the Cooperative’s Board of Directors.

Candidates include:

• Incumbent, Willie Sensley, Jr. of Farmerville
• Nominee, Benjamin Walton of Bernice

The seat will be filled by a vote of the Cooperative’s membership. The election will take place at the 2025 Annual Membership Meeting. According to Claiborne Electric’s Bylaws, directors shall be elected by a majority vote of all registered members casting ballots at an Annual Meeting. Directors are nominated by district, but elected at large by all registered members attending the Annual Meeting.

Ballots for the election will be attached to the registration card members receive in the mail in mid-May. Members are urged to bring the registration card in its entirety to the Annual Meeting. Ballots will be marked and detached from the registration portion using a perforated line, ensuring a private vote. Ballots will be cast in locked boxes, and the registration portion will be collected separately for the prize drawings.

Five questions were posed to the two nominees in order to help Claiborne Electric’s members get to know each candidate better. Questions and each candidate’s answers are linked below.

Meet the Candidate: Willie Sensley, Jr.

Meet the Candidate: Benjamin Walton

 

Willie Sensley Jr. 

 

Benjamin Walton

BROADBAND DEPLOYMENT UPDATE 

It’s been some time since the Cooperative has provided a detailed update on the deployment of internet services to all our members.  Over the last several weeks, many of you have reached out to the Cooperative’s member services team asking when internet service would be available in your area.  We realize this is an important need for our members and want to provide you with as much up-to-date information as is available.

As you may remember, in 2020 the FCC incentivized the deployment of rural broadband services through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).  RDOF was a competitive bid process focusing on unserved or underserved census tracts in the rural parts of the nation.  Claiborne Electric participated in that process, but its bid was unsuccessful.  The census tracts for almost all the Cooperative’s service territory were awarded to a private, third-party provider: Conexon, LLC.  Since its initial RDOF award, Conexon has also been awarded supplemental blocks of funding through both Louisiana’s Granting Unserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities (GUMBO) Program and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program.  Under these programs, it is Conexon’s sole responsibility to construct the almost 3,000 miles of fiber optic infrastructure needed to ensure reliable high-speed internet service to your homes and businesses.  Since the broadband network is being funded by a mixture of Federal and State funds, and because Conexon and Claiborne are not joint partners in this initiative, Claiborne has no control over Conexon’s work plan or how quickly it completes its network buildout.

For almost two years, your Cooperative worked diligently with Conexon to negotiate the contract needed to allow Conexon to attach its fiber optic cables to the Cooperative’s poles – poles you as members own.  In February 2024, Conexon and Claiborne executed a License Agreement that allowed Conexon full access to the Cooperative’s distribution infrastructure.  Since last February, the Cooperative and its engineer have reviewed possible attachments to more than 6,100 Cooperative-owned poles (approximately 277 miles).  As of December 2024, Conexon had made service available to only 827 homes or businesses. To put that into perspective, your Cooperative serves more than 24,000 homes and businesses every day.

Since last June, the Cooperative’s staff and engineer have invested countless hours evaluating various design proposals from Conexon which would limit Conexon’s costs to modify Claiborne’s existing infrastructure (often referred to as “make ready” costs) allowing them the space required to install their fiber optic cables on the Cooperative’s poles while complying with all applicable codes and good utility practices.  Despite three significant design standard revisions offered by Claiborne, Conexon still remains unwilling to move forward with the make ready process on a system wide basis.  The Cooperative continues to engage in almost weekly discussions with Conexon to offer any assistance it can while maintaining the safety, integrity, and reliability of your distribution poles and lines.

Much like the rural electrification more than 80 years ago, this service cannot come fast enough for many of our members. We share your frustrations!  In the few cases where Conexon has agreed to reimburse the Cooperative for make ready costs, the Cooperative’s staff and engineers are doing everything they can to expedite the make ready work needed prior to Conexon installing its fiber optic cables.  We are proud to say that so far, your Cooperative has met every construction commitment date for this pole line modification work.  The ultimate timeline for construction and delivery of your internet service rests solely with Conexon, something far beyond the Cooperative’s control.

While we are periodically updating Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Campbell on the status of this project, the LPSC currently does not have jurisdiction over broadband providers.

We plan to make more frequent updates on the progress of Conexon’s build-out.  It is our sincere hope each of those future updates brings better news!  In the meantime, if you have specific questions about Conexon’s service to your home or business, please contact Conexon directly at 1-844-542-6663 or visit www.conexonconnect.com.

Our members, like nearly all sectors of society, are facing a higher expenses in every area of life – at the grocery story, in the housing market, in the vehicle market, and yes, in utilities.

One of the most common concerns our members contact us about is their electric rate. As we discussed last month in our newsletter article about understanding billing, Claiborne Electric’s rates are right in the middle of electric rates in the state. However, it has been necessary to slightly increase rates to cover the Co-op’s expenses.

The reason is, like other homes and businesses, we have seen an exponential rise in the cost of doing business during the past five years. Equipment, plant materials, fleet vehicles, labor, insurance, and all areas of business have risen sharply. While we do everything in our power to reduce expenses and hold the line on rates, we must maintain and upgrade our system in a timely manner to reduce outages and increase reliability. We must replace fleet as it reaches the end of its lifespan. We must provide our employees with living wages and benefits that take care of their families.

The graphic below provides some insight to the cost increases we have seen in the past five years. These items are just a few pieces of equipment we use to keep the lights on for our members. Transformers have risen 63% in cost. Fiberglass crossarms have more than doubled in price. Primary and secondary wire are up 51% and 62%, respectively.

As an electric cooperative, owned by the members we serve, we want to help our members understand everything possible about the Co-op.

Claiborne Electric is a not-for-profit electric utility. As a cooperative, we only charge what is necessary to cover our expenses. In the uncommon years that we do make more than we need, the excess is allocated back to the members. We aren’t in business to make money; we’re in business to deliver reliable, cost-effective power to our members.

As a not-for-profit electric cooperative, we are in business for one reason and one reason only – to meet the needs of our members. As much as we wish we could meet those needs without cost increases affecting rates, we simply can’t. We can, however, promise our members that we will continue to do everything possible to budget wisely, exercise financial responsibility, and manage rates the best we can for our members. After all, we are your friends and neighbors.