Top Innovators
David Naylor is the President and CEO of Rayburn Electric Cooperative.
Rayburn Electric Cooperative won the Fortnightly Top Innovator 2025 award ''Lewis Latimer Top Innovator in Technology or Process Design'' for its Generation Reliability Strategy.
PUF's Lori Burkhart: Please describe the innovation and its positive impact.
David Naylor: The acquisition of Rayburn Energy Station (RES) marked our first major step into local, dispatchable natural gas generation, and the planned RES II expansion builds directly on that foundation. Together, the two facilities add more than thirteen hundred megawatts of local generating capacity.
With electricity demand in Texas projected to climb twenty-five percent over the next decade, and northeast Texas leading that surge, this investment couldn't be timelier.
These projects redefine what it means for a generation and transmission cooperative to lead through reliability investment. By locating generation close to the communities we serve, we reduce exposure to market volatility, ease transmission bottlenecks, and ensure power is available when members need it most, especially during peak demand and extreme weather.
The innovation is as much about process as technology: building new generation quickly, at competitive cost, and within the cooperative business model that prioritizes member value.