The Advantages Of Membership

As a cooperative electric utility, Battle River Power Coop serves as a benchmark for the industry in terms of service and pricing
and we are proud that we continue to ‘raise the bar’.

The Board of Directors that governs your cooperative is elected by you – the membership. They are fellow members who live and work in your communities and understand the challenges, economics, issues and successes of the rural areas that Battle River Power Coop serves.

You join a family of over 8500 members; some who are members by tradition and others who made a smart, cooperative choice.

Receiving distribution services from a not-for-profit cooperative means your distribution tariff payments are not leaking out of Alberta in the form of stockholder gains; rather members save by receiving distribution from Battle River Power Coop year after year. Taking a 12 year period from 2007 – total member savings was $68.4 M and the average individual member saved almost $8100.00–savings that remain in the hands of members to spend in rural Alberta communities, contributing to rural economic prosperity.

We employ 50 qualified, dedicated people who respond and serve the membership by keeping the power on every day, effecting timely power restoration, facilitating new construction to increase the membership base, monitoring and maintaining vegetation management and infrastructure replacement programs to maintain a safe, reliable system and managing utility billing/administration for sound financial oversight.

We support community by coordinating vegetation management and capital project work with the 13 Municipal Districts and Counties in our service area. Leveraging the workforce and schedules for these activities makes efficient use of tax dollars and generates further savings to members and taxpayers.

We support the local economy. Over the last 14 years we spent $65M locally and $221M provincially because we believe in “buying local” first.

We developed rural initiatives like the Member Value Program, which promotes rural businesses to our members providing a diverse selection of goods and services they can purchase locally.

We support community through free public safety training initiatives – EMS, Fire Departments, and Schools across 13 counties.

We support community through investing in our youth – awarding a total of $58,000 in member scholarships. We make available to our members 2 annual Alberta Community & Co-operative Association camp sponsorships to the leadership program at Goldeye Centre.

Members remain the center of our business and we continue to develop innovative ways to provide efficient, cost-effective power distribution and enhanced service while balancing cooperative principles and community benefit.

We confirm that members have the right of retailer of choice for their energy requirements and will in no way be disadvantaged by that choice.