T.I.P Rural Electric Cooperative - Your Touchstone Energy Partner

		T.I.P. Rural Electric Cooperative has come a long way since 1938 when Phelan Construction Company was hired to build our first line that totaled 132 miles. It took until April 27, 1939, for that line to become energized by W.H. Fisher who was Board President at that time. Our first substation that was just south of Belle Plaine provided the electricity for that line.

Irvin Nervig was our first General Manager and he held that position from 1938 until 1978, when he retired. His dedication and hard work built the foundation that keeps your Cooperative strong and along the way he accomplished exactly what he set out to do - get electricity to the rural people.
By the year 1947, with the help of cooperatives like ours 79% of Iowa farms had electricity. Rural people had helped to get that job done by joining their neighbors in starting non-profit rural electric cooperatives. Private power companies had not extended service to rural areas because they decided it could not be profitable.

The early 1950's found T.I.P.'s service area growing. We had five substations, which also meant our membership was getting larger. This in turn makes for an increased amount of paperwork and record keeping. Without enough office space at the present location a new building was constructed at the west edge of Brooklyn and the move was made in June of 1953. At approximately the same time our service territory was stretching farther to the south. Service calls to that area would take longer because of the distance that had to be traveled. The decision was made to have an outpost at Sigourney to maintain the southern half of the service territory. 1963 marked a quarter century for T.I.P. Rural Electric Cooperative. A lot of changes had happened over the last 25 years. The dream of a few farmers had grown to 10 substations, 4,000 members and 1,600 miles of distribution line. The first patronage refund also happened this year with $180,000 in dividends being paid back to those who were members from 1940 through 1947. The worst ice storm of T.I.P.'s history struck in 1975. On March 27th ice and high winds downed over 1,000 poles. With the help of other REC's and independent contractors, and the use of our own employees, we were able to work around the clock to restore power as quickly as possible. Within a few days all members again had power restored. The age of computers for T.I.P. began in June, 1978, as we joined Central Area Data Processing in St. Louis, Missouri. Record keeping and billing procedures no longer had to be done by hand. Another big change happened in 1978 as General Manager Irvin Nervig retired after 40 years of service. Darrel N. Heetland who had been the Assistant Manager filled the position to become only the second manager in the cooperative's history. The Louie the Lightning Bug safety program debuted in February 1989. Louie and his helper travel to all the schools in our service territory promoting electrical safety to the children. In 1998, T.I.P. joined with Touchstone Energy, a national alliance of local, consumer-owned electric cooperatives providing high standards of service to customers, large and small. Touchstone Energy cooperatives are local, active members of their communities dedicated to serving commercial, industrial, agricultural and residential customers with integrity, accountability, innovation and commitment to community. Straight line winds in the 100 miles per hour area struck T.I.P.'s service territory on June 29, 1998. Approximately 4,500 of 5,500 members were without power. Transmission service was lost to 17 of our 21 substations by our power supplier. We requested help through the Iowa REC Disaster Plan and received a lot of help from various places. All totaled there were 47 extra people working in addition to our own 27 employees. By 5 PM on July 3rd all consumers that had facilities in condition to use power were restored. Our damage estimate for this storm was approximately $250,000.00. The Turtle System was our next big project. In May 2001, we began installing meters with an automatic meter reader in them. This Turtle automatically reads your meter and transmits the reading down the electric line to the substation receiver. The substation receiver is called each night by a host computer in the Brooklyn office. Eventually, we hope to have the entire system read automatically. Once again office space became an issue and it was decided that an addition to our existing office was necessary. During October 2001 the addition was completed and the move began. At present T.I.P. Rural Electric Cooperative has 21 substations serving 1782 miles of line with 6,200 accounts receiving electrical service.

TIP RURAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE
PO Box 534
Brooklyn, IA 52211
Phone 641-522-9223
Fax 641-522-9271
EMAIL US