Do you remember anxiously awaiting final grades to post at the end of semester in school? I was really into academics, which meant grades were very motivating to me—mostly because they signaled to me how I was performing at a task that I was very committed to doing well. And, I may have been partially incentivized by my parents’ promise to take me out for ice cream if I kept my grades up.

Here at the co-op, our annual report card includes a very difficult to accomplish goal. Think of it as the electric system equivalent of an A++. That goal is the ever-elusive 99.99% average system availability index (ASAI) for the year. We lovingly call it “chasing four 9s.” I am incredibly proud to report to you that in 2023, Cherryland achieved four 9s for the first time in our documented history.

What does that all mean? It means we kept the lights on for our members 99.99% of the time in 2023. The actual calculation is done at the minute level. To put a finer point on it, Cherryland only achieves four 9s if our average member experiences less than 52 minutes of power outages throughout the entire year. In 2023, our average member experienced less than 43 minutes. For comparison, the average electric customer in Michigan experiences 188 minutes of power outages per year, according to the most recent statewide data.

For us, this is our annual report card. It tells us how good of a job we are doing maintaining and keeping our system resilient, so we can make good on our promise of best-in-class electric reliability for you, our members.

I’m proud to say, we earned this grade through years and years of diligent investment in hardening our system. It’s a reflection of the $2 million per year we spend on tree trimming, the $5 million per year we spend on upgrading, rebuilding, and maintaining the poles and wires that serve you, and the millions of dollars we have spent over the last decade on new technologies that help us isolate and repair issues faster than ever before. Over the years, we have made countless investments in upgrading lightning and wildlife protections, moving more of our electric distribution system underground, and creating system redundancies that allow us to reduce both the frequency and duration of outages our members experience.

It’s easy for those of us in the industry to get caught up in the technical details, but as a cooperative, our most important goal is to meet your expectations. We don’t just want the numbers to say we’re doing a good job; we want you to feel it. I consistently hear from our members in the community that their experience matches what our metrics are telling us. You trust us to keep the lights on and we’re doing that.

When I look at our 2023 report card, I don’t just see proof that our investments are paying off. I see the value that every single employee at your cooperative brings to our work. Each of our 60 employees takes a tremendous amount of pride in keeping the lights on and being careful stewards of our members’ money. That means we wait anxiously for our grades to see if all that hard work and diligence paid off. This year it did, and I think that deserves at least a scoop or two of ice cream.