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Covington Electric Cooperative, Inc. celebrated 80 years in business with a pop-up birthday party at its location in the Sanford community on Friday, August 2.

CEC was formed to electrify rural areas in South Alabama in 1944. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association introduced the Youth Tour program in 1957, and it is still going strong to the present day. Nine years later, Covington Electric Cooperative and Alabama Electric Cooperative mutually agreed to end joint operations. In 1966, John Hill was named the general manager of CEC, and its office in Sanford was built.

Covington Rural Services was established, and C-Band Satellite TV service was first offered in 1986. Charles “Ed” Short was named the general manager with the retirement of John Hill in 1990. Three years later, the Alabama Blizzard of 1993 caused prolonged outages throughout the entire state. Hurricane Opal wreaked havoc across CEC’s service territory with some outages lasting more than a week in October 1995.

CEC joined the Touchstone Energy Cooperative alliance in 1998. Hurricane Ivan caused major widespread damage to the CEC electric distribution system in September 2004.

The Bright Ideas Program was established for teachers at schools served by CEC in 2016. Covington Electric launched Buzz Broadband, providing high-speed fiber Internet five years later. CEC initiated a community solar garden project and expanded access to solar energy in 2022. Mark Parker was named CEC’s new president and CEO following Short’s retirement in 2023.

Today, CEC serves approximately 24,300 meters across six counties: Covington, Coffee, Crenshaw, Dale, Geneva, and Escambia. An additional branch is located in Enterprise.

Covington Electric Cooperative is located at 18836 U.S. Highway 84 outside of Andalusia.

For more information visit covington.coop or call 334-222-4121.