National Cut Your Energy Costs Day

Today, Jan. 10, is National Cut Your Energy Costs Day, which encourages people to look for ways to reduce energy costs and save on their energy bills. Terry Ballenger, Vice President of Communications for Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative, tells how all customers on the system can save. “As far as an effort by all our folks, if people would try to avoid using their major appliances such as water heaters and clothes washing that sort of thing outside of the peak hours. In the winter time our peak hours are between 2-7pm. If they could move their use of electricity for those larger appliances and larger energy users to outside that window, Monday through Friday from 2-7pm, if they could shift their use after 7pm or before 2pm, as a group effort that lowers our kw demand that we have to pay for whole sale energy and that provides a savings for everyone because for every kw or kilowatt, that is required to meet the demands of our system during that peak period we pay a pretty good premium for that. So, if we could hold energy use down during that five hour period that can amount up to considerable savings for all of our members. So, we certainly encourage members to do that. We do have programs here like our Power Savers Program where we can install a load control switch on either a heat pump or an electric water heater and just take those off line for shot periods during that peak time and that helps to hold that peak down. That is something that we can do to help members out if they want to get involved in that. We’ve got more than 5,500 switches out on the system now and they are doing a great job for us and we would like to add some more. So, all of those things together can certainly help to hold down energy costs for the folks that we serve.” To learn more about the Power Savers Program, call Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative at 1-888-BLUERIDGE.