It’s time for you to get the credit—capital credits, that is—for helping build, sustain, and grow your local electric cooperative. This fall the San Bernard Electric Cooperative Board of Directors elected to retire nearly $1.2 million to nearly 27,000 active and inactive members like you across portions of eight counties served by the co-op.

When you sign up to receive electric service from an electric cooperative such as SBEC, you become a member-owner of that cooperative. While investor-owned utilities return a portion of any profits back to their shareholders, electric cooperatives operate on an at-cost basis. So instead of returning leftover

funds, known as margins, to folks who might not live

in the same region or even the same state as you do, SBEC allocates and periodically retires capital credits (also called patronage dividends, patronage refunds, patronage capital or equity capital) based on how much electricity you purchased during a year.

This year, SBEC members who purchased power in 1987 and 2020 will receive a percentage of capital credits retirements through credits on their December bills, reflecting their contribution of capital to and ownership of the cooperative during those years. The amounts retired to our membership represent 32.2% of capital credits allocated for 1987 and 25.5% of capital credits allocated for 2020.

Before retirement, these funds helped SBEC reduce the amount of money it needed to borrow from outside lenders to build, maintain and expand

a reliable electric distribution system and covered emergency expenses.

For a more detailed explanation on capital credits, visit sbec.org.