As 2024 draws to a close, we’ve conducted our annual tally of the stories that drew the most readers to electric.coop and cooperative.com throughout the course of the year. Without a doubt, all eyes were on Hurricane Helene this fall as electric cooperatives grappled with one of the most consequential storms in their history.
Beyond the five most-read stories, two key themes emerged in terms of reader interest—stories about co-ops’ push for smart energy policies that prioritize reliability and affordability, and coverage of co-ops securing federal funding for projects to help strengthen the grid.
Without further ado, the top five:
1. Hurricane Helene: Tracking the Co-op Response
Helene knocked out power to more than 1.2 million electric cooperative members in late September after barreling into Florida’s Big Bend and wreaking havoc far inland, with devastating impacts in Georgia and the Carolinas. “We have 40-year co-op veterans who say this is the worst and most widespread destruction they’ve seen in their careers. The damage is catastrophic,” said Jim Donahoo, spokesperson for Laurens Electric Cooperative in Laurens, South Carolina, in our update published two days after the storm made landfall.
2. For Co-ops Grappling With Helene’s Destruction, It’s All Hands on Deck
As NRECA continued to track power restoration progress after Hurricane Helene, stories emerged of co-op employees working relentlessly to keep spirits high among line crews—regardless of their role or responsibility and even amid damage to their own homes. That included the president and CEO of Broad River Electric Cooperative fixing hot dogs and packing lunches for lineworkers laboring to restore power to members of the South Carolina co-op.
3. Electric Co-ops Win $7.3 Billion in New ERA Funding for Clean Energy
In early September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that 16 electric co-ops from throughout the country were selected for more than $7.3 billion in the first round of grants and loans from the Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program to finance new and innovative energy projects. Dairyland Power Cooperative, a generation and transmission co-op in La Crosse, Wisconsin, was the first New ERA awardee.
4. Proposed Cuts to Rural Mail Service Pose Fresh Threat to Co-ops, Members
A new U.S. Postal Service plan announced in August took aim at the frequency of pickups and deliveries for rural customers, a change that could hurt the ability of co-ops to communicate with their members. Co-ops have already faced sharp postage rate increases in recent years that have raised costs to ship their magazines, electric bills and other mail to members. “If rural mail service continues to decline—and it will under this new proposal—electric cooperatives will have to take a hard look at how we reach our members,” said Cally Peterson, editor of the member magazine for the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives.
5. ‘The Bridges Are Gone, the Roads Are Gone’: How One Co-op Is Coping With Helene
French Broad EMC was one of several co-ops in western North Carolina that faced indescribable damage after Helene’s relentless rains pushed power systems, roads and even villages off Appalachian hillsides and into flooded valleys. “There are a lot of areas that we can’t even get into other than flying over them,” CEO Jeff Loven told NRECA in the days after the storm during a detailed interview about the co-op’s recovery process. “We’ve got so much work right now that we have to fix a lot of other things before we can get close to getting out to those very remote areas.”