Amana Society Services Co  506 39th Ave, Amana, Iowa, United States
Since Jan, 2017
Established in 1932, The Amana Society, Inc. is a one-of-a-kind legacy corporation located in the Amana Colonies with businesses that produce handcrafted furniture, unique woolens, authentic German foods, livestock, crops, energy production, forest products, and community services.
Businesses such as the Amana Woolen Mill, the Amana Meat Shop, the Amana General Store and the Amana Furniture and Clock Shop, once a part of the original immigrant life style, remain as thriving businesses within the Amana Society, Inc., reflecting a portrait of quality passed on from one generation to the next.
The Amana Society, Inc. offers national distribution of their products and provide a unique experience for visitors to observe craftsmen at work, savor Amana-made foods, and enjoy annual events within the beauty of the Amana Colonies, one of Iowa’s largest tourist locations.
Our Promise
The Amana Society, Inc. remains true to The Amana Way through integrity, responsibility, sustainability, quality, and entrepreneurship.
History
In the early 1840s, a group of God-fearing immigrants left Germany in search of religious freedom in the new world, settling in Ebenezer, New York. In 1855, they re-established themselves in 26,000 acres in the fertile Iowa River Valley. There they settled seven villages and called their home “Amana,” meaning “remain true.”
They lived communally in a religious environment, worked the land for farming and built industries to provide life’s necessities – woolen mills, cabinet shops, meat shops, bakeries and others. Each member contributed a particular skill and worked for the common good of the community. They also embraced new technology and obtained a number of patents for innovations in their industries and mills.
The communal life style was abandoned in 1932 and the Amana Society Corporation was established to continue the management of the land, the industry, and several community services within Amana Colonies. Many descendants of the original settlers remain in Amana working as craftsmen and passing down their trades to new generations. The excellence of Amana products continues to attract national attention for its superb workmanship.
Amana Society Service Co.
The Amana Society Service Company provides electricity and water utilities to the approximately 1500 residents and over 160 businesses in and around the seven Amana Colonies. The Amana Society has been the provider of utilities for the Amana Colonies since their founding, but the Amana Society Service Company, Inc. was incorporated in 1936 as the provider of electric service for the colonies. Water service was provided by each individual colony to its residents and businesses until the early 1970s, when this function was also taken over by the Amana Society Service Company. While it is an investor-owned utility, owned by the Amana Society shareholders, it operates more like a municipal utility, providing street lighting and other miscellaneous services to the community, in addition to water and electricity.
The Service Company has, over the years, built a very modern and reliable system and now boasts underground electrical distribution lines to all seven colonies. Recently, a project to convert all the customers to automatic meter reading technology was begun and will be completed in 2015.
Electricity for distribution in the colonies is purchased through an electric buying group, the Resale Purchasing Group of Iowa (RPGI), an alliance of municipals, rural electric cooperatives and one investor-owned utility across eastern and central Iowa. The aggregation of many smaller individual loads gives RPGI greater negotiating power to achieve the lowest possible rates for the customers of its members. The Service Company also buys “green energy” from the 2.8 megawatt Amana Farms anaerobic digester, which processes beef cattle waste and offsite industrial and food wastes to produce methane and, in turn, to generate electricity. The wastes, once processed through the digester, are stored in an 18 million gallon lagoon and land applied as crop fertilizer through the use of a nine-mile pipeline which distributes the wastes to much of the 25,000 acre land mass that is the Amana Colonies. The Service Company also owns and operates a 24 megawatt diesel generating plant that provides storm protection and other interruption protection for the Amana Colonies in the event of an interruption in the supply of power from the transmission lines bringing in power from remote generation. Ownership of this stand-by capacity also helps in negotiation of lower electricity rates for the Service Company customers.
In the past, the Amana Society Service Company also provided the telephone service for the Amana Colonies. The telephone service company was sold to a private telephone service provider in the early 1990s.
| Company Name | Amana Society Services Co   |
| Business Category | Electric Power |
| Address | 506 39th Ave Amana Iowa United States ZIP: 52203 |
| President | John Peterson |
| Year Established | 1932 |
| Employees | NA |
| Memberships | NA |
| Hours of Operation | Monday-Friday :8:30 am–5:00 pm |
- Electric Power Services