After 85 years, Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative still conquering terrain, industry challenges

Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative turned 85 in August. President and CEO Jim Lovinggood said while the state’s largest electric cooperative has transformed in his 43 years with the company, the original mission remains unchanged.

“We were established to serve electricity in areas where nobody else wanted to go,” he said. “When I came to work in 1982, we were still less than 30,000 meters. Now we’re approaching 75,000 meters.”

In terms of footprint, Blue Ridge Electric — so named because a large portion of its coverage area is in the Blue Ridge mountains — is the largest of the 20 electric cooperatives doing business in South Carolina, Lovinggood said.

It serves about 1,800 square miles and owns and maintains about 7,500 miles of distribution line. But building and maintaining a power grid in mountainous, heavily wooded and rural areas has not been easy. When he started in 1982, Lovinggood remembers hearing stories about how crews in the 1940s used mules and draft horses to drag poles up mountainsides.

“It is a beautiful territory, but it is not very kind to electric utilities,” he said. “And yet, it may sound a little hokey, but we look at this as a calling. We take supplying energy and internet services very seriously.”

Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative has 175 full-time employees and several hundred contractors.

Electric evolution

“We’re still very much evolving, but we’ve grown pretty dramatically in the last four decades,” Lovinggood said.

Part of that evolution is rooted in the complexities facing electrical-utility providers. From local, state and federal regulations to clean energy initiatives and grid resiliency, the pressure is on.

“Not just clean energy, but reliable, cost-effective energy,” Lovinggood said. “And it’s no secret that as an industry, we’re struggling to provide the necessary quantity, because the capacity is not there.”

This is especially true in South Carolina, where increased demand, fueled by population growth, is the challenge of the next decade.

“We’re all about technology, we’re all about green energy, but there has to be an emphasis on reliable energy, too,” Lovinggood said.

It’s why Grayson Kelly, senior vice president of government and public relations, spends time working with lawmakers.

“The past two years, we’ve worked on a number of pieces of legislation,” Kelly said. “We passed the South Carolina Energy Futures Act last year through the state legislature which authorized additional generation to be built.”

The South Carolina Energy Futures Act, also known as the South Carolina Energy Security Act, was signed into law in May.

Kelly said additional power-generation capacity is critical for distribution utilities like Blue Ridge Electrical Co-op, which is growing by about 1,500 meters a year, particularly in the Clemson, Seneca, Easley and Powdersville area.

“And that’s what we’ve been lobbying our lawmakers for, which is to allow power generators to continue to produce more energy so that we can provide power to those moving into the area,” he said.

Meanwhile, both Lovinggood and Kelly said what sets Blue Ridge apart after all these years is not only the ability to deliver a reliable grid, but also the shared commitment of its employees to provide excellent service.

“It’s been an incredible journey,” Lovinggood said. “One we’re incredibly proud of.”

Blue Ridge Electric timeline