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Contact:
Blake House SAWNEE EMC
PLANS FOR UPCOMING (Cumming, GA February 23, 2007) – “Is this coming early… did I miss something…?” The answer is Yes; beginning in 2007, Daylight Savings Time (DST) is coming earlier and staying around later than in pervious years. Last year, the U.S. Congress approved a change as to when Daylight Savings Time would start and end each year. This change was part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Beginning this year, on March 11th, DST will start approximately three (3) weeks ahead of its normal time (which would have been April 1, 2007) and end approximately one (1) week later than normal on November 4, 2007 (originally would have been October 28, 2007). Sawnee EMC has been evaluating the impacts this change “could” have on its internal and external processes and has determined that no real issues exist. Carl Badgett, Vice President of Information Services, states that “within the Corporation, various processes including the devices that control our “telephone switch”, “our computer calendars”, and “how we enter time worked for our employees” were reviewed and we saw no real concerns”. He adds, “This is not a Y2k (Year 2000) type of event; however, we wanted to make sure we understood what this could mean to us and more importantly to our operations”. Sawnee assembled an internal team back in January to study the potential impacts associated with this DST change. To date, the staff of Sawnee EMC has identified forty (40) different applications that will either 1) adjust their application clocks, as needed, due to this change, or 2) identified processes where they needed to manually adjust the clocks. Either way, the staff of Sawnee feels they are ready for these changes which they believe will not have an impact on their operations. Microsoft Corporation has a “Daylight Savings Time Help and Support Center” at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst to assist individuals with their home PCs and their business servers. The site contains a lot of good information about this issue and what can be done to make sure you are prepared. Things seem to be coming sooner and sooner each year and in the case of Daylight Savings Time in 2007, that is true. Sawnee EMC wants its members to know it has studied this issue and will be ready to address any challenges that might develop. Additional questions or concerns can be directed to Blake House, Vice President of Member Services at 678-455-1510 or via email at blake.house@sawnee.com. About Sawnee EMC: Sawnee Electric Membership Corporation is a distribution electric cooperative headquartered in Cumming, Georgia. Sawnee serves electricity to over 142,000 accounts in seven (7) counties of greater north Georgia. Sawnee’s assets exceed $368 million with annual energy sales of 2.23 billion kWh and revenue of over $201 million. With over 296 dedicated employees, Sawnee’s team of professionals meets the needs of its member-owners through its complex network of over 8,300 miles of distribution facilities. Georgia’s 42 electric cooperatives now serve more customers than any other state network of EMCs in the nation.
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