First Electric Cooperative Corp.

About Us

First Electric Cooperative Corporation is a nonprofit electric distribution cooperative, incorporated April 26, 1937, as the first electric cooperative in Arkansas, under the direction of the Rural Electrification Act as signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
First Electric energized its first power lines on April 15, 1938, near Jacksonville with three employees and served 150 members.

Today, First Electric serves more than 100,000 member accounts throughout parts of 18 counties in central and southeast Arkansas. First Electric Cooperative is headquartered in Jacksonville, Ark., and also operates four other full-service offices in Benton, Heber Springs, Perryville and Stuttgart.
First Electric owns and maintains more than 9,600 miles of distribution power lines, nearly 200,000 power poles and 47 substations.

First Electric's member account base is 93 percent residential, 6 percent commercial and industrial and 1 percent agricultural. First Electric is organized as a not-for-profit business, returning capital credits to its member/owners on a recurring basis. With the 2016 refund of $9.024 million, the amount returned to First Electric members now totals more than $86.6 million.