In this episode of The Co-Op Heroes podcast, we sit down with Nate Melby, VP and Chief Information Officer at Dairyland Power Cooperative, to explore how an electric cooperative became an unlikely pioneer in artificial intelligence, and how that innovation is now spreading across the cooperative movement. When Nate arrived at Dairyland Power, a Generation and Transmission cooperative, he brought an unexpected background: a PhD in Information Systems and experience with deep learning research in academic laboratories. In 2018, while most industries were still experimenting with AI, Dairyland began building machine learning models to optimize load management and system efficiency. The journey evolved into something bigger. What started as internal experimentation became VoltWrite, Dairyland's proprietary AI solution. But the real innovation was to not keep the technology to themselves. Following the core cooperative principle of collaboration, Dairyland began sharing VoltWrite with other cooperatives. Today, it's a nationwide service helping electric co-ops across the country work smarter, faster, and more efficiently. Nate shares the real challenges of bringing AI to an industry skeptical of new technology. The technical barriers proved manageable. The human factor (overcoming doubt, building trust with early adopters, helping skeptics become believers) required patience, board-level support, and demonstrable results. Featured topics: The early days of machine learning adoption at Dairyland Why cooperatives were positioned to innovate before the mainstream Real-world use cases: semantic summarization, anomaly detection, document analysis The big dollar decision: replacing a software project with AI agents built in-house Overcoming the human factor in technology adoption How board support and demonstrable wins build organizational buy-in The cooperative principle of collaboration that turned VoltWrite into a national service "Pulling on the thread" problem-solving and agentic AI Building agents for compliance automation and complex workflows Nate explains how cooperatives, constrained by limited resources, are uniquely positioned to benefit from AI. When you work for a utility where every efficiency gain directly serves members, the incentive to innovate becomes clear. And when cooperatives collaborate rather than compete, those innovations ripple across the entire network. This is a story about leadership, courage in the face of uncertainty, and how the cooperative principle of working together for greater good extends into the age of artificial intelligence. The Co-Op Heroes podcast brings you real stories from electric utility operators, the people who work around the clock to keep our communities powered and served.