Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative (HOEC) hosted Media Day on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, offering local media a look at the cooperative’s progress in safety, technology, and system reliability during the 40-year career of retiring CEO/General Manager Dan Singletary.
HOEC’s commitment to safety has earned multiple No Lost Time Accident awards. “This year, Missouri Electric Cooperatives recognized HOEC for working 332,395.5 hours without a lost time accident,” Singletary explained.
The cooperative has invested in new equipment and technology as it has become available to promote safety. A vehicle location system allows dispatch to monitor crew locations. “That is a huge personal safety win,” he said. “We know where our linemen are and can account for them when they are out working outages especially. We also have adjusted working hours during multi-day outages, realizing that we have to give the crews rest to keep them safe,” he said.
Technology has transformed the industry more than any other one thing. “I started as a computer programmer with HOEC, and as personal computers came along, I was in charge of setting those up and getting them integrated in so employees could be more efficient,” said Singletary. “Now we use technology in every aspect of our jobs. We have meter technology allowing us to ‘ping’ meters to verify if they are without power. We still need members to report outages and technology helps with that by allowing them to report on the SmartHub mobile app or our website,” he added.
Linemen also receive work orders digitally, and an upgraded radio system has improved communication across the service territory. “Not only does this improve efficiency, it directly supports our safety standards,” Singletary said.
One of the big improvements for the engineering department is SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) allowing HOEC to see real-time data across the substation and system usage. “This is a great advancement allowing us to oversee our system and provide reliable electricity to our members,” he said.
Providing reliable electricity is more than just having the lines and poles up and running. “Our Right-of-Way program is much more robust than it was when I started,” Singletary explained. “Keeping this cleared allows crews to identify issues faster during storms and overall keeps items out of the lines.”
“We have also replaced poles with bigger and stronger poles over the years. This makes them sturdier for ice/snow load and for fiber attachments for internet in our rural area,” he said. “Our poles are not as apt to come down during storms as they once were.”
Finally, HOEC continues to invest in employees. “Our linemen now come to us from linemen schools, so we know they have the basic knowledge and climbing ability,” he said. “We also utilize Missouri Electric Cooperative for their training programs for not only linemen, but every aspect of the cooperative business model. All of this combined allows us to provide safe and reliable electricity for our members.”
