Information Saves Power; Saving Power Saves $$

Over this past weekend , starting Friday, 25 April, AP&T was running diesel for 60% of our power. In an email to me this morning, Stan Selmer, AP&T manager, said that AP&T anticipates running 50% diesel, 50% hydro for the next 4 weeks. When Goat Lake goes down, our rates go up. (Don't don’t use your drier. ) But it’s good to know what’s going on, isn’t it? Knowing, you can conserve; not knowing, it’s business as usual. If we are on diesel, not knowing might lead you to inadvertently rack up higher and higher electric costs.

I first learned about Friday’s switch to diesel by accident. I was talking to the Borough manager, Robert Venables, about the Alaska Energy Authority meetings (see my 25 April blog, “Left Out!”), and the manager mentioned that Mr. Selmer called the Borough to advise on the diesel/hydro status.

Apparently there isn’t any established protocol for letting the communities know about such a shift. I asked the Borough manager what he did with the information and he said he sent out an email to the members of the Assembly.

I understand that levels at Goat Lake come and go. And when they go, we go on diesel. But there is another component to why we have to go to expensive diesel. Our consumption. We have a voracious appetite for electricity, but we are not addicts. When there are negative consequences of use, we can cut back. Higher rates are negative consequences. When we go on diesel, our costs go up proportionately. Is it just way way too simple to think that one response to Goat Lake’s reduced flow is to reduce our consumption of electricity?

But someone has to let us know what is happening with the hydro/diesel equation. This morning Mr. Selmer said,

Stephanie, sorry but I don't have time to give you daily reports on hydro/diesel usage. We anticipate the diesel hydro mix to be about 50/50 for the next 4 weeks. Hope that gives you enough information.

I don’t blame him for sounding a little peckish. I’ve been bugging him. I just wanted to know how much diesel we were using. I think it’s a reasonable request from a consumer, but I do agree that it would be a hassle to respond to every consumer individually. So, I have asked one of AP&T’s biggest consumers – our Borough government – to formally request notification from AP&T when a switch to diesel is anticipated. I submitted a letter to the Assembly 24 April suggesting the following:

I think the community of Haines would be well served by receiving notification in advance of AP&T’s need to go to diesel. Given notification, it might very well be possible to prevent the need to fire up diesel. For example, notified that diesel will be necessary if consumption continues to exceed hydro capacity, users could institute planned conservation measures. Big users, like the Borough and the school district, might make a big difference. Theoretically, we might avoid the tipping point. We might avoid diesel.

I would like the Borough Assembly to do two things:

#1. Request AP&T to provide notification in advance of activating diesels. This could be done with a phone call to the Borough, to KHNS; by an alert on the AP&T website.

#2. Request AP&T to help educate consumers with well thought out conservation tips. Perhaps AP&T could “borrow” from the Ketchikan Public Utility Internet site. KPU has an excellent list of 20 “tips” from “turn off the lights when you leave the room,” to “perform energy audits.”

Creativity is not in short supply in Haines. People have come up with suggestions for disseminating our diesel/hydro status. Here are a couple: a digital display at the bank. Envision, temperature F, temperature C, Goat Lake levels. Another person imagined a graphic and continually updated bar graph display on the AP&T website, Goat Lake capacity compared to current consumption. Nice ideas.

If you would like more information from AP&T pertaining to the amount of diesel being used to generate your electricity, perhaps you could also send a note to the Haines Borough Assembly. It works well to email the Borough Clerk, Julie Cozzi, jcozzi@haines.ak.us. The next Assembly meeting is May 13.

Meantime check out the Ketchikan Public Utilities website for good conservation tips. Then you might read a very clear discussion about the power your electronics are consuming even when they are off {Why Your Electronics Suck (Energy)}. And in the words of the Conservation and Efficiency Workgroup for the Fairbanks Energy Strategic Business Plan (2007),

No matter what type of energy is used, its cost to consumers is a function of its unit of energy times the price per unit. When energy is expensive the user has limited choices; pay the high price, switch to a lower cost energy source or reduce energy costs by using less energy. The cheapest unit of energy is the one not used (p.31).