Your Electric Cooperative Pays You for Being a Member
BCREMC is more than an electric utility. It is your electric cooperative. Because of that, BCREMC members like you enjoy some special perks including one that puts money back into your pocket.
It's that time of year for you to get the credit you deserve for sustaining your local electric cooperative. We have issued capital credit refunds as a bill credit to members who received electric service during 1993 to1994 and/or 1996 to1997. To reduce administrative costs and postage, checks will not be sent to active members. If you have a refund, you will see it on this bill statement as a Capital Credit Refund.
Bartholomew County REMC has retired $743,000 from 1996 and 1997. The refund also includes $323,940 retired from Hoosier Energy, our wholesale power provider from 1993 and 1994. These capital credits are a return of your patronage (investment) in BCREMC.
You might not realize it, but when you signed up to receive electric service from Bartholomew County REMC you became a member-and owner-of an electric utility. While investor-owned utilities return a portion of any profits back to their investors, electric co-ops operate on a not-for-profit basis.
Therefore. instead of returning leftover funds, known as margins, to investors, we issue capital credits to our member-owners. The amount you will rece ive is in direct proportion to the amount of electricity you used during the years being retired. Detailed records are maintained to show how much capital each member is allocated during the years of service.
When cooperatives take in revenue above operating costs, those margins are kept as working capital for approximately 25 years to run the cooperative before being paid out to members.
All members who purchase power from Bartholomew County REMC provide funds to help finance our operations. Our annual capital credit retirements occur at the end of the year, if the board of directors determine it is financially feasible for the cooperative.
Bartholomew County REMC is pleased to report that your cooperative is financially stable and proud to return capital credits back to you, our members.