Bill Rogers new GM at
Caney Fork Electric Cooperative customers are no longer in the dark about who will be the utility’s next general manager.
Bill Rogers was promoted to the job Jan. 1 after serving as interim general manager since Oct. 8. Rogers has worked at Caney Fork since 1985 as director of engineering. He was named assistant general manager in 1997.
‘My goal is to make the system better and more reliable each year,’ said Rogers. ‘I want the lights to stay on more this year than they did last year.
‘We’re a service-oriented business. When people flick a switch, they expect a light to come on. When they’re working on a computer, they don’t want the power to go off for a second and end up losing their document. Our job is to provide the best service possible.’
Caney Fork Electric covers primarily a four-county area: Warren, DeKalb, White and Van Buren. However, it also has customers in Coffee, Putnam, Grundy and Cannon counties.
In his tenure at Caney Fork, Rogers has been instrumental in building three new substations, and he’s heavily involved in the two-way automated meter reading system now being installed. He works closely with the rate structure to keep electric bills as affordable as possible.
‘I’m only four days into my new title,’ Rogers said Friday. ‘So I’m still trying to get organized. And I’m trying to find an engineer to take my old job. I’m doing both right now.’
Caney Fork has 31,000 customers, with 26,000 of those being residential customers. The cooperative’s biggest commercial customers are located in the industrial park in Morrison, and in White County.
Rogers says the peak demand for power is around 7 a.m. during the winter months, and around 6 p.m. during the summer. ‘It’s been that way for years and years,’ said Rogers.
In the winter, people bump up the heat in the morning, and take hot showers which leads to the 7 a.m. peak demand. In the summer, people are returning home from a hot day and bumping up the air conditioning.
As for upcoming challenges, Rogers says Caney Fork is about to be hit by a wave of retirements which will mean hiring many new employees.
‘With the turnover we’re about to have, we have to make sure we’re adequately staffed and don’t sacrifice service during the transition period,’ said Rogers.
Caney Fork currently has 79 employees with 60 of those working out of company headquarters in McMinnville.
Rogers is a Clarksville native who has a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Tennessee Tech. He is married to Kristie Rogers, an assistant principal at Warren County Middle School. They have one son, Slayden, a sophomore at WCHS.