Nolin RECC officials recapped the electric co-ops activities and business figures from 2023 during their annual membership meeting Thursday afternoon.
Nolin District 3 Director Rick Thomas said the co-op ended 2023 with 36,814 active accounts.
“If you’ve kept up with that the last few years, that number’s been going up and it’s pretty obvious,” Thomas said. “Part of it, you’ll see new houses and things going up, but right now the biggest surge is in apartments, and you’re probably seeing them go up in a lot of places too, so we expect that to continue. I don’t know where we have a guess on when we’re going to get to 40,000, but we’re getting pretty close to it.”
Operating revenue was reported at about $85.3 million while operating expenses were reported at about $84.8 million. Thomas said the operating margin of about $497,000 is down from years past in part because inflation has increased the cost of materials and impacted supply chains, but the co-op’s staff has worked hard to limit the impact.
“We’re very fortunate that we have the staff that we have that have taken it in their hands to keep an eye on that, trying to keep those costs down, and also there’s an issue with just getting materials now and they’ve had to work through that, so I hope you appreciate their efforts on that,” Thomas said.
Nolin RECC President and CEO Greg Lee said the focus of operations continues to be what is best for the co-op’s members.
“In 2023, we found ourselves in the fortunate position to be able to retire just over $2.7 million in capital credits,” Lee said. “That was the fifth straight year we had been able to make a general retirement and the cumulative total over those five years is now over $20 million.”
The annual meeting can be viewed on Nolin RECC’s YouTube channel. The annual report was included in the items distributed in the buckets members received during meeting registration.
