Plans for the New Year



Happy New Year. I would like to highlight a few key projects that your board of directors approved at their last board meeting that outlines our 2024 workplan and budget.

Renewables: Oakdale Electric Cooperative (OEC) continues to support renewable energy with our community solar garden and helping members connect their own member solar projects to our grid. Our two solar garden projects constructed in 2023 are online. One of them is a 1.5-megawatt (MW) system and the other is a 3.0 MW system. In 2024, we will not be building anything new, however, we decided to work with other Wisconsin cooperatives to leverage grants and purchases so that we can build a 4.0 MW system in 2025. 

Electric Rates: Last October we had an increase in the residential facility charge. Currently, we are not expecting to have to raise rates in 2024. However, as costs continue to increase, we will need to continue to evaluate. If changes had to be made, we would notify members in advance.

Technology Updates: In 2024, we plan to start the upgrade of our end-of-life load management system with a newer system that will complement our automated metering system.  This upgrade was originally planned for 2023, however, we delayed it as this will take a few years to fully implement the new system. There are many benefits to upgrading our load management system including the ability to implement new control strategies to help with newer rate designs.

We are also continuing to administer new hardware on our distribution lines to help monitor and restore outages and voltage information remotely.

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