Ten Years of Drupal Support for Delaware's Member-Owned Electric Cooperative.

In 1936, a group of southern Delaware farmers founded the Delaware Electric Cooperative (DEC) to provide electricity to rural areas that larger utilities had ignored. Since its founding, the DEC has changed a great deal as a member-owned, non-profit utility. The organization now differs from typical investor-owned utilities by focusing entirely on its members' benefits.

We started with the outage.

We treated DEC's website less like a utility's brochure and more like the utility itself. Something that had to work instantly for members who lost power and needed an answer, not a scroll.

That meant rebuilding the experience around three things:

— speed to outage and service information
— self-service for everyday account needs
— clear paths to energy savings tools

What we've built.

Beat the Peak, front and center.
DEC members have saved over $45 million through Beat the Peak since 2009, with the program's savings and participation options front and center on the site.

+ Energy Vampires, made visible
A dedicated campaign showing members exactly where phantom loads drain their bill, with a clear next step to fix it.

+ Start or transfer service without calling in
Members handle new and existing service requests directly on the site.

+ Energy-saving tools built for every member
Lower my Energy Use, Home Energy Audits, Beat the Peak with EVs, and Community Solar each get their own clear entry point.

+ A CMS DEC's team actually owns
Drupal, redeveloped and supported for over a decade, so updates don't wait on a developer.