How many energy-efficiency experts does it take to change a light bulb?
For Donna and Randall Johnson, the number was two green-uniformed workers from the Neighborhood Energy Connection (NEC). The workers and a supervisor showed up at the St. Paul couple’s 1925 colonial in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood last week to help them save a little money by making their house more energy efficient.
The workers not only swapped out incandescent light bulbs for the curly-cue compact fluorescents, they also installed a better programmable thermostat, laid down weather stripping, pressurized the house to look for air leaks, inspected the water heater, peeked at the attic and advised the Johnsons their aging furnace might need an upgrade.
It was a no-brainer to sign up for the $30 service, the couple said.
“They have the expertise we can draw on,” said Randall, 63, a dentist. “Whatever they do is a benefit.”
The Johnson house is just one of hundreds of thousands of little battlefields in a statewide war on energy waste. Conservation — an important but dull staple of utility energy programs — is surging this year.
It has gotten a boost by the massive economic recovery package, which funded programs such as cash for inefficient appliances and low-income weatherization, and by a president who calls insulation “sexy.”
There’s a nudge coming from the 2007 Minnesota Legislature, too.
Three years ago, lawmakers told Minnesota utilities to reduce
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their energy demand by 1 percent to 1.5 percent per year, starting in 2010.
This is the year the caulk hits the crack.
Historically, Minnesota utilities have reduced demand by only .8 percent per year, or little more than half the new target. So utilities ranging from giant Xcel Energy down to rural cooperatives are rolling out new tactics and technologies to persuade customers to reduce their energy usage, even if that means paying workers to screw in light bulbs.
In essence, the utilities are on a diet this spring, hoping to lose that last 10 pounds of flab. The hardest pounds to shed? Residential usage. Because so many homes must participate to move the needle, it is the bulge at the utilities’ waistline and hips.
FULL-COURT PRESS
Electricity usage dropped last year, but analysts disagree over whether it will bounce back once the economy recovers.
But everyone agrees that real reduction will require a shift in behavior. Environmentalists think that’s possible.
Linda Taylor, clean energy director at the nonprofit Fresh Energy, an advocacy group in St. Paul, compares energy efficiency to recycling decades ago.
“We didn’t require people to recycle; we just required counties to provide opportunities to recycle with curbside pickup,” she said. About two-thirds of residents now recycle as a habit.
The surprising rush on Minnesota’s cash for appliances program, which lasted only a day, as well as the availability of tax credits for everything from windows to furnaces is whetting an appetite for energy efficiency, said Bill Grant, associate executive director of the Izaak Walton League of America.
“The consumer is beginning to realize now is the time to make these investments,” he said.
New opportunities are emerging.
For example, Xcel Energy and CenterPoint Energy teamed up with the NEC in St. Paul and the Center for Energy and the Environment in Minneapolis to co-sponsor the Home Energy Squad visits.
Started as a pilot last year, the program is sweeping through St. Paul neighborhood by neighborhood. They do the little jobs people always say they’ll do but somehow never get around to actually performing, Chris Duffrin, NEC’s executive director, said.
After hitting 230 homes in St. Anthony, the Midway, Hamline and now Mac-Groveland so far, the NEC expects to tune up 3,700 homes by the end of the year, Duffrin said.
Homeowners might enjoy the convenience, but Xcel and CenterPoint appreciate the certainty that they will see actual energy reductions from each home, however small.
Xcel is also issuing monthly written energy report cards to 50,000 homeowners that compare them to their neighbors’ average usage. They hope the feedback will prod people to cut back their usage.
But even with this kind of full-court press, Xcel expects to reduce its energy demand only by 1.1 percent this year, up from 1 percent last year, said Deb Sundin, the utility’s director of demand-side management and renewable strategy and planning.
Minneapolis-based Xcel expects to increase that percentage by only a tenth of a percent per year for the next two years.
It probably won’t reach the targeted 1.5 percent goal until 2014, she said. The utility will file a three-year plan for 2013-15 later.
Although the legislative goal carries no penalty if it isn’t met, utility officials say they are serious about meeting it.
There’s an unspoken implication that state regulators and environmentalists will oppose requests to build power plants to meet future demand — and increase the burden on ratepayers — if the utilities can’t show they’ve tried to control demand for electricity and natural gas.
Meanwhile, Sundin said Xcel gets about 80 percent of its energy reductions from its business customers.
It’s not hard to understand why, because those savings go to the bottom line. Utility rebates help by shrinking the payback time, too.
A single business customer can institute changes that erase more energy load from a utility’s waistline than hundreds of homes can.
BOILERS, CHILLERS AND PIPES
Not far from the Johnsons is St. Catherine University, with 1 million square feet of building space to heat and cool.
Over the past six years, working with Xcel, maintenance crews have changed out thousands of less-efficient light bulbs, repaired boilers, cleaned steam traps and generally tightened and tweaked.
The utility bill dropped from nearly $2 million a year to $1.2 million last year, the university says.
“When I started here,” said Joe Pallansch, the trades manager who joined the campus in 2005, “we ran one and a half boilers, or 900 horsepower worth of energy. Now we run one boiler, saving 300 horsepower.
“That’s equivalent to 24,500 pounds of steam, which is 24,500 pounds of water we didn’t have to heat,” he said.
The college last week cleaned a chiller beneath O’Shaughnessy Auditorium for the first time since its 1964 installation, which should improve its efficiency.
But Pallansch and his boss, Jim Manship, director of facilities management, are studying an idea to bore an underground pipe from a more energy efficient chiller beneath the new student center to O’Shaughnessy and use the old cooler only as backup.
It’s a $200,000 project with a six-year payback, but St. Kate’s, which celebrated its 100th anniversary not long ago, can be patient , Pallansch said.
“We’re going to be here for another 100 years, so we’re not looking for short-term gains,” Pallansch said.
LIFE WITH TED
Xcel home customers Adam White and Cassie Gariepy don’t have professionals like Pallansch or the home squads.
The couple, who are getting married in July, are relying on TED to help them save energy.
TED — or The Energy Detective — is a home-energy monitor that attaches to the wires at the circuit box in their basement.
It sends a wireless signal to a monitor that shows in real time how much electricity they are using — turn on the lights or a stove burner and a few seconds later, TED shows a jump in electricity usage.
If that sounds too geeky, think of TED as your new Mom or Dad asking why the stove’s on.
The couple keeps TED in the kitchen and since TED arrived in the mail from Xcel a couple of months ago, the pair have cut their monthly power bill by one-fifth, or $50.
“It was something as simple as — when I went to toast a few buns, I’d turn on the oven and I’d notice I was using 5 kilowatts,” said White, a 26-year-old IT support technician at Medtronic.
“So now I use the toaster oven, which is one kilowatt,” he said.
Gariepy said TED is her ally in reducing the power usage that shows up on their home-energy report. “I’m very competitive,” she said. “So now I look at my house and I wonder who’s using less energy than us.”
THE NEW NORMAL?
Not all utilities are equal. And because they don’t have the same mixture of residential and business customers, they’re approaching conservation differently.
Minnesota Power in Duluth has 12 industrial customers — taconite mines, paper mills and oil pipelines — but they consumed more than a third of its electricity last year.
Due to their size, these customers are allowed to opt out of the utility’s energy efficiency efforts. They do their own efficiency programs to stay competitive, said Amy Rutledge, the utility’s spokeswoman.
That leaves mainly residential customers, and Minnesota Power is attacking that market with informational campaigns. Its developed a “pyramid of conservation” on its Web site that works like the old food pyramid to teach people how they can save energy.
Natural gas utilities have a special challenge, too. While electricity has many uses, from stoves and ovens to flat-screen TVs, lighting and video games, natural gas is used primarily for heating. There are far fewer opportunities to make changes.
CenterPoint Energy filed a plan with the state to let it get to a 1 percent reduction by 2014, spokeswoman Becca Virden said. The utility also has gotten approval to be part of a pilot program to make sure it doesn’t lose money on its rates if it succeeds in reducing usage.
Rural cooperatives may have fewer commercial customers than an Xcel and practically no industrial ones, unless you count farmers.
The co-ops are tackling conservation house by house with everything from new-fangled monitors to the old familiar rebates. Great River Energy, a Maple Plain utility whose member co-ops serve 65 percent of Minnesota geographically, expects to reduce its demand by 1 percent this year.
To get an additional one-third of a percent point, the co-op will target efficiency at the plant, said Gary Connett, director of demand-side management.
He’s one of experts who doesn’t think demand will spring back when the recession ends.
“As forecasters, we’ve got to get our hands around the new normal,” Connett said. “Never say never, but I think it’s going to be a long time” before demand returns.
Leslie Brooks Suzukamo can be reached at 651-228-5475.
source: www.twincities.com
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