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The Big Picture

  By: Chris Reese, President & CEO

  Email: contacttheceo@sussexrec.com

As a not-for-profit rural electric cooperative, our relationship with our members is incredibly important. Our organization was started by members of this community and we work hard every day to serve our members by providing them with safe and reliable power. We are constantly working with members to help them be more energy efficient, to educate them on safety matters and programs they can use, and make sure they receive the electric service that meets their needs.

However, we ask that our members keep in mind that, while each of you is important, we have almost 12,000 members in total. Every member’s concerns matter, but there’s a bigger picture to consider beyond one person’s needs. 
While our mission is to provide our members with the highest quality of service at the lowest possible cost, remember that we are a small business working with limited resources and limited time. To efficiently meet our mission, we must adhere to the responsibilities and efforts that best fit that goal. To put it simply, we do more with less
A good example of this is tree reports from members. We encourage members to let us know if they know of trees that could pose a threat to our utility equipment by sending photos to trees@sussexrec.com. Each of these submissions is reviewed by a Sussex REC employee and the majority end up being inspected in-person by our forester. However, reporting a tree to us does not guarantee that the tree will be trimmed or taken down.

For us to trim a tree, there are certain conditions that need to be met. We take into account the tree’s distance from our equipment, its health, and overall lean. Most importantly, it needs to be clear to us that there is specific utility equipment, such as our power lines, poles, or transformers, that would definitely be affected if the tree or its branches were to fall. In some cases, a high cost to remove a tree plus low risk to our lines means there’s not enough justification for us to have the tree work done. We may decide to leave the tree alone. These are calculated risks we have to take because we cannot cut every tree near our lines. The severe storms we had over the summer took down many seemingly healthy trees and branches, and hardly any dead or dying trees.

Not every tree reported to us qualifies, which has upset some members. From their perspective, they’re often worried because a tree looks like it could fall on their home, their vehicle, or their loved ones. We understand these concerns, but Sussex REC isn’t responsible for all trees in our area. We need to prioritize trees that would most affect our electricity and our bottom line.

We are always, on a yearly basis, proactively trimming trees that will affect our service because that is our key responsibility – providing safe, reliable power. In situations where a tree wouldn’t qualify to be handled by us, the responsibility falls on the property owner to have it trimmed or removed. Many people are understandably looking for a free way to remove trees that could potentially pose a danger to things they care about, but we have thousands of members and hundreds of thousands of trees across our service territory to consider. It would be financially impossible and most importantly, irresponsible, for us to trim all these trees. Likewise, it would not be fair to provide a special service to one member that other members wouldn’t be able to receive, even if they’ve been a member for decades.

This rationale is also why we only trim branches by a home’s service wire if they’re actively touching and pushing on the wire, and why we don’t haul away wood left over from tree trimming work. We try to provide the best service we can, but also need to be practical to ensure we have the finances, manpower, and time to handle the necessary work of being a small electric utility. Setting priorities like these helps us work as efficiently as possible while treating all of our members fairly.

Despite our size, we have accomplished great things like having one of the lowest electric rates in the state, being NJ’s most technologically advanced utility, having an 80% carbon-free power mix, and regularly giving back to the community. We simply ask that our members work with us to understand the bigger picture: everyone has a part to play. We’ll always be here to handle our part, which is delivering safe and reliable power to all of our members.