When you flipped a switch this morning, brewed a cup of coffee, or kept your home cool against the South Texas heat, you were experiencing your cooperative at work behind the scenes.
Being a member of Medina Electric Cooperative means owning a piece of a local enterprise built on shared purpose and a deep commitment to the place we all call home.
Each year, our annual report allows us to reflect on the hard work of the past year and connect those milestones directly to the momentum driving us forward today. Everything we do—from defending our infrastructure against summer storms to protecting your wallet—is rooted in one simple promise: prioritizing safe, reliable and affordable power for you.
Power Affordability
It’s no secret that inflation is impacting pocketbooks. Medina EC is no different. In 2025, we completed a cost-of-service study to fully understand where our pricing stood. Across our industry, the essential equipment needed to build, repair, and protect your electric system saw price increases unlike anything we’ve seen in decades:
- Utility poles rose by 39%
- Service wire surged by 126%
- Transformers skyrocketed by 247%
To ensure our line crews always have the equipment needed to keep your lights on without compromising safety, we implemented a $3 adjustment applied to the flat monthly Customer Charge for our general service, seasonal and small commercial rate classes.
Every dollar you invest in your cooperative is managed with careful stewardship. Rather than earning a profit for distant investors, those funds stay right here in South Texas—reinvesting directly into the lines, poles, and technology that serve your home or business, while continuing our proud tradition of returning capital credits back to our members.
Power Reliability
If living in South Texas teaches us anything, it’s that Mother Nature always has the final word.
When severe storm fronts swept through our territory last June, high winds and lightning pushed our total outage minutes higher than average. Yet, even with those storm-driven outages, we saw our local Distribution SAIDI—the metric tracking the performance of our local equipment alone—drop to a four-year low.
That historic low is the result of intentional, year-round planning, teamwork and grid maintenance. We worked closely with our generation and transmission partner, South Texas Electric Cooperative to form a Reliability Committee. By analyzing the root cause of every outage, we found that nearly 40% of outage time was weather-driven, while 26% was linked to the transmission of power and substation outages.
This data provided us with clear opportunities to strategically plan where to prioritize our infrastructure investments and project coordination. Rather than applying a one-size-fits all approach, we zeroed in on nine high-priority substations heavily impacted by lightning by equipping them with advanced lightning arrestors. We also modified relaying schemes to isolate faults faster.
At the same time, we prioritized vegetation management across our service territory to further reduce tree-related outages. Guided by two certified arborists, our tree-trimming and right-of-way teams cleared 529 miles and sprayed 606 miles of overgrown lines last year. That intentional, hands-on work paid off, reducing tree outages from over 120 to just 80—a trend of steady improvement we continue to build on today.
Power for the Future
Medina EC, in partnership with STEC and San Miguel Electric Cooperative, continuously work to protect the affordable and reliable power supplied right here in South Texas. Through our board representation with our generation partners, two landmark moves were set into motion that protect your power supply and your budget for years to come:
1. Quick-Start Reliability: We supported STEC’s $768 million acquisition of two natural gas-fired power plants, adding 768 megawatts of quick-start, on-demand power to meet the state’s soaring electricity needs during peak hot and cold snaps.
2. Long-Term Financial Protection: At SMEC, we helped secure a historic $1.4 billion USDA “New ERA” grant and loan. As this funding finalizes, the plant will transition into a 400-MW solar and 200-MW battery storage facility—a strategic move projected to save Medina EC approximately $191.6 million over the next nine years, buffering our members against volatile market price swings.
Powering Members
Protecting your membership also means advocating for you beyond our local lines. Last year, we joined forces with Texas Electric Cooperatives to defeat House Bill 5604, a piece of legislation that would have allowed commercial telecom companies to access cooperative utility poles at deeply discounted rates. While we strongly support broadband expansion across South Texas, we firmly believe commercial entities should pay their fair share—not shift those costs onto your electric bill.
We bring that same member-first mindset to managing regional growth across South Texas, particularly in Medina County, where we are seeing an unprecedented influx of commercial developments, data centers and industrial facilities. Our policy on growth is simple and nonnegotiable: growth pays for growth, and it always has. Through our Advanced Contribution of Aid to Construction policy—the same standard applied to any new member building a line—large commercial entities are required to pay upfront for engineering, design, staff time and system upgrades needed to connect them. Existing members will never subsidize the infrastructure required to power new neighbors.
Powering Communities
While poles, wires and digital infrastructure keep the lights on, our heart belongs to the communities we serve. Being a cooperative means measuring our performance not just in kilowatt-hours, but in the lives we touch and the local strength we build together.
Over the past year, we were honored to reinvest in our region through:
- Over $108,000 in economic development and charitable donations to local nonprofits through programs like Sharing Success, our Community Empowerment Program and other donations.
- $60,000 in academic scholarships to support students across our service territory pursuing secondary education.
As we look toward the months and years ahead, our commitment remains to Exceed Member Expectations in Everything We Do. We are building a smarter infrastructure, a stronger team and a cooperative that is ready for whatever the future brings.
Thank you for your voice, your continued support and above all, your trust. It is a privilege to serve as your cooperative leadership.
Until next time,
Kenneth Weynand and Trey Grebe
