Corporate

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Corporate Information

Overview

Delaware Municipal Electric Corporation, Inc. (DEMEC) is a public corporation constituted as a Joint Action Agency and a wholesale electric utility. DEMEC represents municipal electric distribution utilities located in the state of Delaware. The creation of DEMEC was made possible by an act of the Delaware General Assembly on June 6, 1978, and the entity was incorporated on July 12, 1979.

DEMEC members include: Newark, New Castle, Middletown, Smyrna, Clayton, Dover, Milford, Seaford, and Lewes. All of DEMEC’s member communities have owned and operated their local electric utilities for nearly 100 years or more!

DEMEC maintains a strong balance sheet and efficient, well-managed business operations. S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Investors Serviceshave assigned ratings of “A” and “A1”, respectively, to DEMEC, maintaining an “A” rating or better for the past 20 years.

DEMEC members and staff were busy in 2024, leading to one of our most successful years. Our accomplishments in 2024 empowered DEMEC to continue “Lighting the Way” for decades to come, for the benefit of our members and their customers.

  • We were delighted to welcome back the City of Dover as an Associate Member. Once again, the DEMEC family has been reunited! Our nine members comprise of all municipal electric utilities in the state.
  • With the help of crews from Dover and Smyrna additional construction was completed at the DEMEC Joint Lineworker Training Yard, including the three-phase overhead setup, pad-mounted transformers, metering, undergrounding, and safety upgrades to host more courses in the lineworker training program.
  • A crew from the Town of Middletown traveled 1,500 miles to the Navajo Nation to participate in Light Up Navajo V, the reservation stretches 27,000 square miles across Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Middletown’s workers, alongside public power utilities from across the country, brought electricity to Navajo families for the first time in their history. This mutual aid without the storm project is the epitome of public power’s ethos of people helping people.
  • In another fulfillment of public power’s value of service, lineworkers from the City of Newark and Municipal Service Commission (MSC) of New Castle traveled to Florida in October to help the City of Orlando recover from Hurricane Milton. The crews worked 16-hour days to get the lights back on quickly and safely.
  • During 2024, we acquired a 5-acre parcel of land for our new headquarters. Located next to the Lineworker Training Yard and a short distance from the Beasley Power Station, the strategic location of DEMEC’s new offices accommodates the continued growth of service offerings to members and future mutual aid efforts.
  • Our annual dinner last September featured, for the first time, a panel of presenters. Energy industry representatives discussed the need for additional capacity to meet current and future customer energy demand, including dispatchable generation to maintain system reliability and resilience. We were proud to welcome leaders from the American Public Power Association (APPA), American Municipal Power (AMP), ACES Power, and the Sierra Club of Delaware for their perspectives on the future of energy.
  • 2024 was also a year-long effort to settle the Indian River Reliability Must Run (RMR) and cost of service charges. The settlement was approved in early 2025, and the project was completed 2 years early, eliminating upwards of $100 million in planned future charges to the peninsula. DEMEC advocated with other parties for the timely build of necessary transmission lines that triggered the end of costly RMR payments. DEMEC and our federal regulatory counsel worked tirelessly to achieve this expedited settlement for DEMEC members and all electric customers across the peninsula.

The above highlights from 2024 showcase DEMEC’s continued mission to support our members’ success and relevance and advance the benefits of community-owned utilities. Thank you to the DEMEC team and our members’ staff that work daily to serve reliable, competitive, and sustainable power to the people that call our communities home for their families and businesses.