What's New

Happy 75th Anniversary Access Energy Cooperative Members!! If you lived in southeast Iowa 75 years ago, you would have experienced a darkness at night so complete it might frighten you now. Except for the feeble orange glow from a lantern carried by a farmer tending his chores, there was no...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that USDA is accepting grant applications to assist small, socially disadvantaged agricultural producers and cooperatives in rural areas to spur job creation.

Members of Midland Power Cooperative and Humboldt County REC overwhelmingly approved a plan to merge the two electric cooperatives. Ninety-three percent of Midland Power members who voted and 89 percent of Humboldt County REC members who voted approved the measure. Both cooperatives held special meetings to close the balloting and...

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recognized Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative this week with the 2011 Wind Cooperative of the Year Award. The DOE and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) presented the award at the TechAdvantage 2012 conference on Thursday afternoon in San Diego, Calif. Iowa Lakes Electric...

Iowa Area Development Group (IADG) and its member electric utilities honored Adams Community Economic Development Corporation (ACEDC) with the Silver Shovel Award on January 25th at the development groups annual meeting in Corning. The Silver Shovel Award honors outstanding leadership, innovation and achievement in business and community development and collaboration...

The Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives is getting social! The IAEC Facebook page offers regular updates about Iowas electric cooperatives, our seven Cooperative Principles and energy-related information you can use. Be sure to like the IAEC on Facebook, Facebook.com/IowaElectricCooperatives.

You might be surprised by the number of co-ops around you. Co-ops have been formed to sell produce and electricity, offer financial and banking services, provide housing and health care, and much more. So where did the bright idea for co-ops come from? Its a matter of principles (seven, to...

Moving Forward headlines this year’s annual meeting of the Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives, Dec. 1-2, 2011. Nearly 500 electric co-op representatives will meet in Des Moines to get the latest information on industry trends, perspectives on the state’s and nation’s economy and opportunities that come with increased global competition. Attendees include locally elected directors, managers and key staff from 42 electric cooperatives that, as a whole, provide electricity to approximately 650,000 Iowans in 210,000 homes, farms and businesses in each of Iowa’s 99 counties.

From eggs and milk to the electricity that powers your home, cooperatives play a big role in your everyday life. And next year, everyone in the U.S. will get to know co-ops a little better. In July, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution designating 2012 as the International Year...

In small-town Iowa and in the nation's largest cities, cooperatives are thriving. That's because consumers are grasping the advantages of the cooperative way of doing business. They like the fact that co-ops are local and member-controlled, concerned about communities and people. They value that cooperatives are not-for-profit and that owners...