SEC Customers Left in the Dark

Thousands Still Without Power to Start the Second Week

SOUTHSIDE – On Monday, 10 days have passed since an ice storm caused power outages for most of Southside Virginia. Lunenburg County and Charlotte County continue to have thousands without power this week and customers are tired, upset and demanding to know why.

While Dominion Power and Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative have both restored power to all of their customers, Southside Electric Cooperative (SEC) continues to struggle in restoring power to their customers. Dominion and Mecklenburg have both now come to help SEC along with other out of town companies, but SEC customers are wanting to know, “What took so long?” Many questions remain to be answered by SEC officials as the initial number of personnel and start to restoration was well behind these other groups.

Calls for SEC CEO Jeff Edwards and board members to be removed have been loud on social media and in state news coverage. County officials in areas such as Dinwiddie have even gone on record to ask for more information and response by SEC to this outage.

While everyone agrees that this was a bad ice storm, questions remain about the preparation, manpower and decision-making of the company.

More than 10,000 SEC members remained without power Monday afternoon and Lunenburg County had the highest number of people without power at 2,278. Charlotte County still had 1,336 customers without power.

SEC said that they hoped to have everyone restored by February 28, which is 14 days after the outages began.

Some of the ire from customers has centered around salaries for upper management that are available to the public on the SEC 990 form. Comparisons to other similar Co-op companies shows that SEC salaries are higher from board members to executives and many people correlate that with less resources and workers being available. 

The outage map and communication from the company were also called into question and seemed to increase considerably following news stories from WTVR News 6 in Richmond about disgruntled customers and the thousands of SEC customers that are still without power.

The Southside Messenger reached out to SEC CEO Jeff Edwards with some questions that had been asked from customers.

Some member owners have indicated that a reduction in workforce could be part of the problem with the SEC initial response to outages. The question of whether there has been a reduction in employees from the time he took over as CEO to now was asked.

Edwards was also asked about the amount of funding that SEC uses in right of way and maintenance each year compared to other groups such as Mecklenburg Electric. 

He was also asked about communication and outage maps not being correct with customers during a crisis such as this.

Customers have reported that there have been situations where they called in to give information about their area and could not get through. Some have allegedly been told that they should check fuse boxes when they have reported lines down near their homes. Edwards was asked what he thought has led to the communication issues during this weather event.

Edwards acknowledged that he had received the questions but stated through email, “I have some things that have to be completed before I can respond.”

For Southside Electric customers, the hope is the things that have to be completed include getting their power back on after almost two weeks.