by Josh P. Crotzer
LESSONS LEARNED
Before Broad River Electric launched our new rate, co-op trustees and employees volunteered to field test it in a pilot program. Here’s one example of what they found:
Broad River Electric trustee DeCole Gallman has used the past few months on Broad River Electric’s new rate as a learning experience. Not just for herself, but for her kids.
“I’ve got two teenagers and a middle-schooler,” says Gallman, who lives in Union. “It’s good stewardship to teach them and make them aware. We can show them when power is being used on SmartHub and on our bills.”
With the new rate, members are charged $12 per kilowatt for their highest hour of use during on-peak hours. Gallman wants to make sure that on-peak use is as low as possible. For their household, that means programming the thermostat setting so their system doesn’t run between 3–6 p.m. in the summer and 6–9 a.m. in the winter. They also avoid doing laundry and cooking during peak hours.
Gallman says the bills that come with the new rate structure carry a lot of helpful information, such as the exact hour when the peak demand was set. She’ll use that to reinforce her lessons on energy use.
“The bill gives us more knowledge to make those choices,” she says. “Knowledge is power.”