Tucked against the base of Mad River Mountain in Bellefontaine is one of Ohio’s smallest co-ops, Logan County Electric Cooperative (LCEC). What the co-op might lack in size, however, it makes up for in service. General Manager Rick Petty and his staff prioritize connections with their more than 4,600 consumer-members in their mission to provide local, safe, reliable, affordable electricity.
Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative (GMEC) serves 17,091 consumer-members in east-central Ohio. The unglaciated terrain doesn’t lend itself to wide swaths of farmland, but the hills make for fine pasturelands for cattle raising, and poultry barns fit nicely in the valleys. Because it’s situated in the midst of the Utica Shale, the oil and gas industry is a strong economic driver for the region.
Pioneer Electric Cooperative, based in Piqua, is a celebrity among cooperatives, if there can be such a thing. On Nov. 14, 1935, just six months after President Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order creating the Rural Electrification Administration, a crowd of more than 500 farmers, businessmen, and statesmen from around the country gathered in Piqua to watch workers set the first REA utility pole in the nation.
