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Welcome to...
Niobrara Valley Electric Membership Corporation!

In 1948 the cooperative opened its doors for business. Three years before a group of dedicated pioneers faced the challenge to bring electric power to the rural people of Holt and Boyd counties. The towns had power and these men believed that the rural people should have the same benefits as the town's people. They formed the cooperation in 1945. It wasn’t until 1948 that cooperative hired Ed Wilson as the first manager and building materials started arriving.

In the beginning, power didn’t come cheap. In the first few years of the cooperative electric power purchased by the members cost, in today’s dollars, 64.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. The average monthly electrical use was 60-kilowatt hours per month. Corn sold for $1.28 per bushel ($8.64 in today’s dollars) and yields were 28.6 bushels per acre. Today the power sold by the cooperative costs an average of 7.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Corn sells for $3.43 per bushel and the average yield has increased to 184.3 bushels per acre.

Today the average farmstead uses 266-kilowatt hours per month. The people of rural Nebraska face a direct challenge to their way of life. Retail competition as proposed by some in Congress will result in higher electric prices to rural Nebraskans. Your cooperative will stand by its efforts to continue to bring low cost reliable power to you the members.