2012 Rural Smart Grid Summit Announces Rural Electric Cooperative Award Winners

Nov. 14, 2012 - PRLog -- SAN DIEGO- Maquoketa Valley Electric Cooperative and People’s Electric Cooperative were recognized at the 2012 Rural Smart Grid Summit (RSGS) as award winning rural electric cooperatives with a smart grid visionary award and community excellence award received on October 30th at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego.  

The awards were voted on by the Smart Grid Summit advisory board made up of utility executives, industry analyst, senior executives from technology companies and association representatives. One hundred and twenty electric cooperatives had the opportunity to nominate themselves for either the Smart Grid Visionary Award and/or the Community Excellence Award. The Smart Grid Visionary Award required nominees to be early adopters of smart grid technology with a successful deployment of at least one smart grid project. The Community Excellence Award went to the REC that demonstrated selfless and extraordinary contributions to the community.

Maquoketa Valley Electric Cooperative (MVEC) won the 2012 Smart Grid Visionary Award for the perseverance to overcome a failed AMI deployment in the early 2000’s with a successful AMI deployment in 2008. MVEC has spent the last two years exploring ways to maximize the use of their SCADA/AMI/OMS data as well as implementing a meter data management system. Top nominees for the Smart Grid Visionary Award were MVEC, Delta-Montrose Electric Association and Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative.

The 2012 Community Excellence award went to People’s Electric Cooperative (PEC) of Ada, Oklahoma for their selfless contributions and continued work within the community. PEC teamed up with local area hospitals to host a two day community blood drive resulting in 276 donors that will touch 837 lives. PEC also took part in CoBank’s “Sharing Success” Grant program and together, they donated $10,000 to Valley View Regional Hospital towards the purchase a MapCHECK diode array and software system.  The MapCheck device delivers higher doses of radiation without impacting nearby normal tissue of local cancer patients. Top nominees for the Community Excellence award included, People’s Electric, Flint Energies and Verendrye Electric Cooperative.

As Randy Ethridge, PEC’s Executive Vice-President and CEO explained, “It is a great honor to have our efforts selected as one of the best in the country at a world class event like RSGS.  It is even more rewarding to contribute to the well-being of our member-owners and that of our local community. Through hard work and determination to better our community and more importantly, someone else’s chance of living, we hope to have saved many lives and touched countless others."

The Rural Smart Grid Summit has a unique format focused on peer-to-peer interaction through private boardroom meetings where up to one hundred and twenty rural electric cooperative executives aggregate to discuss the latest technological advances and solutions in Smart Grid technologies, with participating Summit vendors. Public Power and Rural Electric Cooperatives wanting to take part in the 2013 Smart Grid Summits should contact Lisa Jones at ljones@smartgridsummits.com or by phone at (603) 513-6425.