Sawnee EMC

Sawnee Electric Membership Corporation

Formerly	Forsyth County Electric Membership Corporation
Company type	Utility cooperative (501(c)(12))
Industry	Electricity
Founded	July 16, 1938 (1938-07-16)[1]
Headquarters	543 Atlanta Road Cumming, Georgia , United States
Area served	Northern Georgia
Key people	Michael A. Goodroe, president and CEO
Products	Electricity
Revenue	$399,589,616 (2021)[2]
Members	193,491 (2022)[2]
Number of employees	357 (2022)[2]
Website	sawnee.coop

Sawnee EMC (SEMC; founded as Forsyth County EMC) is an electrical generation and transmission cooperative founded in July 1938 and based in Cumming, Georgia. As of 2022^[update], Sawnee EMC is the third-largest electric co-op in Georgia and the eighth-largest in the United States, operating 11,982 miles[1] of power lines in seven counties: Cherokee, Dawson, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, Hall, and Lumpkin. It is a member of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and Touchstone Energy.

Michael Goodroe is the president and CEO of Sawnee EMC.

History

After the Rural Electrification Administration was created in 1935, the Forsyth County Electric Membership Corporation was incorporated on July 16, 1938, and the co-op began providing electricity to about 750 homes via 163 miles of power lines on June 22, 1939. Forsyth County EMC changed its name to Sawnee EMC in August 1950, taking its name from nearby Sawnee Mountain. In 1974, Sawnee EMC was one of the dozens of Georgia-based EMCs that founded Oglethorpe Power,[3] and Sawnee was similarly a founding member of the renewables-focused Green Power EMC in 2001.

Domain name incident

In May 2024, Sawnee advised customers to switch from www.sawnee.com to www.sawnee.coop following a cyber security incident.[4]

Board of directors

Sawnee EMC's board of directors is composed of nine elected members:[2]

Name	District and position
Marshall Millwood	District 2
Bill Barnett	District 3
Gary Porter	District 4; chairman
Tim Heard	District 6; secretary-treasurer
Rodney Reese	District 9
Terry Mathis	District 7
Donna Yost	District 8
Larry Evans	District 5
Roger Coker	District 1; vice-chairman

Foundation

Sawnee EMC operates the Sawnee Electric Membership Foundation, which donates to schools and charities in its service area.[5] Since 2003, the foundation has given out $3.8 million.[5]

References

1. Jones, Erica (July 13, 2022). "Sawnee EMC celebrates 84th anniversary". Dawson County News. Retrieved September 16, 2022.
2. "Sawnee EMC 2021 Annual Report" (PDF). Sawnee EMC. Retrieved September 16, 2022.
3. "Our Company". Georgia Transmission. Retrieved September 16, 2022.
4. "Sawnee EMC asking customers to use new website after cybersecurity incident affected original one". WSB-TV Channel 2 - Atlanta. May 8, 2024. Retrieved May 30, 2024.
5. "Sawnee EMC Foundation donates $1K for books for kids in Cherokee". Cherokee Tribune and Ledger-News. September 5, 2022. Retrieved September 16, 2022.

External links

• Official website