The ice and snow blanketing Arkansas had still refused to retreat an inch on a late-January morning, but Buddy Hasten was still on the job. The state had, for the most part, managed to dodge a frigid bullet, electricity still humming along in most areas. Yet Hasten, president and CEO of the Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp., stayed vigilant. His entire life has been about power one way or another, and he knew it was not yet time to exhale.
“I’m just thanking divine providence that all the really bad stuff that comes with these winter storms sort of avoided Arkansas,” Hasten said. “Unfortunately, it hit our neighbors in Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, but for our members and folks in Arkansas, we’re glad it didn’t hit here. At least what did hit, we were prepared for, and we really did have minimal outages over the storm.”
Buddy Hasten
Hasten knows better than most just how delicate and fraught with uncertainty these things can be. He has been following electrical currents ever since he was young, starting with his time as an undergrad at Auburn University in Alabama, where he majored in electrical engineering. After graduating, Hasten signed on to the Navy and spent 20 years working on nuclear submarines before returning to his native state of Iowa, where he was regional director of generation for Alliant Energy.
Today, Hasten oversees the generation and delivery of power for more than 1 million members of the state’s electrical distribution cooperatives.
“We are a ‘G and T,’ which stands for generational and transmission cooperative,” Hasten said. “We are owned by the 17 distribution co-ops of Arkansas, so we have 17 members. The 17 distribution cooperatives in Arkansas all own AECC, and I work for them.”
Think of it this way: Those 17 cooperatives pool their respective resources together to form a company that provides wholesale electrical power at the distribution level, which then can be made available to the actual members of the cooperatives.
“We own the transmission, and we own the generational assets,” Hasten said. “We operate the power plants and the transmission system, and then that power goes out to delivery points all across the state to our 17 members. That really is the function of AECC, to do the wholesale power and transmission service for our 17 members.”
Yet there is so much more to all of it than just making sure the juice is still flowing. To begin with, many of those 17 cooperatives scattered across the state serve significant rural populations, which present their own challenges when it comes to connection, generation and power restoration.
“I think I would say there’s challenges for sure,” Hasten said, “just the geography alone and the sheer volume of what we do, plus we go through some pretty tough territory, but we’ve been doing this a long time. I think cooperatives in Arkansas have been around about 80 years, so we value our members.”
Making everything work when it is expected to work is a full-time job in and of itself. Yet AECC is so much more than a faceless organization keeping its eye on the power grid. AECC prides itself on investing in the communities it serves, especially when it comes to making science, technology, engineering and mathematics education available to area students.
AECC partners with 4-H for SeaPerch, an underwater robotics program that gives teachers and students resources to build remotely operated underwater vehicles, and sponsors youth trips to Washington, D.C. The state’s electrical cooperatives are also active in teaching electrical safety to young children and help sponsor the state spelling bee and the Arkansas Farm Family of the Year awards.
“The electrical co-ops are not for profit,” said Rob Roedel, director of corporate communication for the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas. “We exist to serve our members, and many of the people in those communities are electric co-op members, so we reinvest in our communities. We’re local. We still operate local offices all throughout the state. People often say, ‘We’re your friends and neighbors.’ Well, we really are your friends and neighbors.”
Rob Roedel
That is not just a canned sentiment — the state’s electrical cooperatives take community seriously. Because several of the areas they serve are rural and not always easily accessible, workmanship and preventative measures are not just buzzwords — they are vital. If an electric cooperative can provide better equipment and better measures for areas that are harder to reach when the weather goes south, they will do it.
“‘Hardening’ is the word they use,” Roedel said. “They’ll increase the pole size. They’ll shorten the span of the lines. They’ll increase the size of the wire or conductor. All of that can ensure the lines don’t come down in a storm quite as often.”
Transparency blended with a sense of community is a big part of the overall mission. Through multiple mediums, AECC provides constant outreach to the areas it serves, whether it be reporting on local events, investing in educational initiatives, or keeping members and residents abreast of ways to prepare for a possible power outage.
“We provide transformers, poles, wires, regulators, insulators — all the kind of stuff you see out there on the electrical grid,” Hasten said. “Another part of the business is that we do construction work, so we build distribution systems, we build transmission systems, we also do repairs for people, and then we have a clearing business that goes out and trims the trees and gets all the vegetation off the electrical system so that when storms do happen, hopefully it doesn’t take the power out.”
If all those extra services are a surprise to some, Hasten is perfectly fine with that. As a general rule, people tend to not think about electrical services unless they are paying a bill or the power suddenly goes out. AECC’s objective is to make the path of electricity seamless and to anticipate anything that could be disruptive, but there is also the mission of embracing and serving member communities through education, communication and philanthropy.
There is a lot of good being done that goes well beyond keeping the lights on.
“It’s really ingrained into the DNA of electrical co-ops all across the country,” Hasten said. “This isn’t unique just to Arkansas, but we take great pride that we are a member-owned organization. We exist solely to provide reliable, affordable and responsible power and services for our members.”
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