Welcome to Heartbeat—your cooperative’s newsletter, now delivered digitally each month with a printed edition available each quarter.
It’s your connection to what’s happening across the Heartland service area, keeping you informed on how your co-op is working for you and for our communities.
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- Annual Meeting Recap
- Scholarship Winners
- Substation Inspections
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Heartland’s livestreamed Annual Meeting was held March 31, with drive-through registration in Gas, Girard, and Mound City. A total of 201 member-owners registered and will receive a $25 bill credit on their April bill.
Highlights:
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- Director elections: Dean Davied was re-elected in District 3, and Larry Lindberg was re-elected in District 2.
- Scholarships awarded: Twelve local seniors each received $1,000 Future Foundations Scholarships.
- Strong financials: Clean audit and more than $745,000 returned to member-owners through capital credits in 2025.
- Prize winners announced: $1,000 in cash prizes awarded.
See prize winners 👉
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Investing in the next generation
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Heartland is proud to recognize 12 local students as 2026 Future Foundations Scholarship recipients. Each student received a $1,000 award to support their education in high-need fields like nursing, education, skilled trades, and agriculture—careers that help keep rural Kansas strong.
By investing in students who plan to live and work in our communities, your co-op is helping build a stronger future for the region we all call home.
Meet this year’s scholarship recipients 👉
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Preventing Outages Before They Start
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You can’t see it with the naked eye—but an infrared camera can.
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Twice a year, Journeyman Lineman Cody Conwell inspects all 15 substations using infrared imaging to spot heat patterns that signal potential problems. Issues like failing connections or stressed components show up early—long before they lead to equipment failure.
That proactive approach helps protect what member-owners have built together and keeps costs down by fixing small problems before they become major ones.
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“We try to be proactive on everything,” Cody said, “so we can shorten the outage—or not have an outage at all.”
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It’s already making a difference. At the Columbus substation, infrared images revealed degraded connections that looked normal during a visual inspection. Because crews caught it early, they were able to replace the equipment on their own schedule—avoiding an emergency repair and a potential large-scale outage.
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And that scale matters. While a line issue might affect a smaller group of members, a substation problem can impact an entire community.
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Each inspection follows a detailed checklist, covering everything from security checks to critical equipment like transformers, regulators, and reclosers. Inspections are timed during peak summer and winter demand, when equipment is under the most stress.
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Substations serve entire communities, so preventing issues here has a big impact.
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