The Delaware Electric Cooperative has its second new CEO in just over a year.
Rob Book takes over as president and CEO of the member-owned electric utility that powers more than 112,000 homes, farms and businesses in Kent and Sussex Counties.
He replaces Greg Starheim, who stepped in when Bill Andrew retired in July 2021, after 16 years at the helm; now Starheim is retiring.
Book has been at the Co-Op for more than 20 years, serving in various roles.
He says he hopes to maintain the coop’s focus on providing excellent reliability for its customers.
“The Co-Op has always prided itself on providing its users and customers a low-cost, high-reliability product for a history of years out there.”
Book says he also needs to help the Co-Op navigate a changing energy landscape that now includes challenges such as “clean” energy and electric vehicles.
“We are conditioned in this country - for years we have utilized coal and natural gas - those traditional forms of power. And over - I would say - past 10 to 15 years, we’ve seen a very quick run- up of solar power and photovoltaics, which in some cases found parity with respect to the cost of those traditional forms of power.”
Book says the challenge is figuring out all those sources fit the utilities’ footprint.
He plans to muster the creative juices of DEC’s 170 employees to tackle those and other challenges one by one.