Michael Murray recently joined the OCEC board of directors.
Members of the Okanogan County Electric Co-op (OCEC) will get a post-holiday gift in January — elimination of the base fee from that month’s bill.
For most customers, this will mean a reduction in the January bill of either $32 or $50, depending on which rate they are on. OCEC decided to waive the monthly base fee on members’ accounts for the December 2018 billing period, after a review of projected year-end margins.
“A combination of lower expenses along with higher than expected revenues in 2018 has produced higher margins than forecasted, and this one-month waiver of the base fee is a way to lower the existing members’ bills and reduce our margins,” said David Gottula, OCEC general manager.
“Also, with December being a high-usage month and our members potentially having high power bills, every little bit we can reduce power bills helps our members,” Gottula said.
OCEC is a nonprofit cooperative and is owned by its members. All margins (revenues less expenses) are eventually returned to members, and the fee waiver is one way of doing this, Gottula said. OCEC also recently announced that there will be no rate increase in 2019.
In other news, the OCEC board of directors has selected Michael Murray as the replacement for Chuck Armstrong, who resigned from the board in October. Murray will need to run for election for the position in April to remain on the board.
Murray is president of Mission:data Coalition, a nonprofit he started that supports state policies enabling electricity consumers to better access their energy usage data for conservation purposes, according to an OCEC announcement. Prior to founding Mission:data, Murray co-founded an energy management software company and ran it for 10 years.
Murray moved to the Methow Valley in 2017 with his wife, Ashley Ahearn, and dog Burnaby. They live in the Rendezvous area near Winthrop.
