General Manager’s Message – July 2025
Who Is Guiding Your Plan?
At my church, we recently completed a long study of the Book of Genesis. For the unfamiliar, the summary is that God had a plan when he formed the universe and Earth from nothing. The sin of man did not shock God because he knows everything, so he had a plan to save us.
That is why he formed the Israelite people with his promise to Abraham. God took the evil from Joseph’s brothers and used it for good, helping him save millions of people from starvation, including the Israelites. You could say that God used Joseph to save the world. But he certainly used him to save his people, so the Messiah could later save the world from man’s sin.
The Israelites would go on to spend centuries in Egypt as slaves, but God had a plan for them, too. That is not until the book of Exodus, though, which could be our next study.
This July, the United States will celebrate 249 years as a country. Like in Genesis, God had a plan at the beginning of this governing experiment. When you study a detailed history of our country, there are many times events could have gone another direction in the blink of an eye, and the experiment would have died.
For example, early in the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington moved most of the Continental Army to Long Island to defend Brooklyn. The British attacked on 3 fronts, catching Washington’s army off guard and outnumbering. Only a series of fortunate events saved the Americans.
Their only hope was to retreat across the river to Manhattan. British ships set sail to cut off that retreat, but there was not enough wind for them to make it. That gave Washington the night to secretly get 9,000 men to safety.
But as the sun rose, much of the Continental Army, including Washington, remained in Brooklyn. That is when God smiled on the Americans a second time. A heavy fog settled over the area, giving Washington and the remaining army the cover they needed to cross safely. Without a lack of wind and some heavy fog, there may never have been a United States of America.
If you believe, like I do, that God has a plan for everyone and everything, that plan was also evident when President Franklin D. Roosevelt formed the Rural Electrification Administration with an executive order in 1935. The next year, God had a plan to fund the REA and change rural communities in the U.S. forever.
At your cooperative, it is our responsibility to seek God’s plan to provide reliable and affordable electricity to our members. This responsibility includes creating an annual projection of the co-op’s load over the next 10 years that is updated and approved by the board of trustees.
This load forecast is then delivered to PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, our generation and transmission co-op, so it can plan to supply each of its member cooperatives with the energy they need. This ensures that when you flip a light switch or turn on the AC, your electricity is working.
We also develop a 4-year construction work plan to address forecast needs and use engineering data to upgrade possible problem areas on our system. By doing so, we can build the proper electric infrastructure to provide for members without overbuilding.
Why is this important? Because an electric utility has only 1 way to generate cash — through electric rates. If we do not plan and build properly, rates may have to increase to pay for this over-build. That is why we take our planning process very seriously.
1 thing we cannot plan for is criminals stealing copper wire from distribution lines. This thievery has cost our membership hundreds of thousands of dollars and can also lead to rates going up.
The management and board at South Alabama Electric Cooperative take this very seriously. We have developed a process with our local county sheriff’s department to apprehend these criminals and address the companies purchasing stolen property. If you see something, please report it to your local sheriff’s department. You could say this is part of our planning, too, but it is not how I would like our resources to be used.
Finally, ask yourself who is guiding your plan? As we celebrate our great country’s birthday, my hope is that our country and each person in it is following God’s plan. Have a happy July Fourth because many men and women have given their lives for our freedom.