Communities served by WPPI utilities save electricity to power 13,500 homes (4/8/08)

Customers served by Wisconsin Public Power Inc., the power supplier for Sturgeon Bay Utilities and 48 other community-owned utilities, achieved energy savings of more than 25,000 megawatt-hours of electricity and more than 39,000 therms of natural gas in 2007.

The savings are a result of cost-effective energy efficiency programs offered by WPPI and its members.

“WPPI and its members believe that the utility of the future should be dedicated to helping customers save energy,” said WPPI President and CEO Roy Thilly. “Helping customers to use energy as efficiently as possible helps to both lower their bills and preserve the environment.”

The system-wide energy savings was achieved through a variety of programs to help both residential and commercial customers reduce their consumption.

In Sturgeon Bay, programs for residential customers included: central air conditioner tune-ups, turn-in programs for old, inefficient refrigerators or freezers, and our tree planting program. Commercial and industrial customers receive funding for lighting and manufacturing equipment upgrades and we reinstated our LED Exit Sign program.

Added to the electric savings achieved since the programs’ inception five years ago, the cumulative savings realized by customers of WPPI member utilities is 120 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year — equivalent to the electricity used each year by 13,500 homes. The environmental benefits of these energy savings include preventing the emission of more than 104,500 tons of carbon dioxide — the same as removing 18,000 cars from the road.

This cumulative reduction in diversified demand offsets the need to generate 17 megawatts of baseload power and helps reduce the need to build new power plants.

“Saving energy will be just as important to our future as building new generation,” said Jim Stawicki, General Manager. “It costs far less to save a kilowatt-hour than it does to build a new, large power plant to generate that kilowatt-hour.”

WPPI and its member utilities continued to significantly ramp up funding for energy efficiency and conservation programs in 2007. Over three years, program funding will increase by more than 300 percent — from $2.38 million in 2006 to $9 million in 2009.

Primary objectives for this funding are to lessen the negative impacts of burning fossil fuels by reducing energy consumption, to control costs by reducing WPPI’s future generation needs, and to keep electric bills down by reducing energy use without adversely affecting convenience or productivity.

Sturgeon Bay Utilities is a member of Wisconsin Public Power Inc., a regional power company serving 49 customer-owned electric utilities. Through WPPI, these public power utilities share resources and own generation facilities to provide reliable, affordable electricity to more than 190,000 homes and businesses in Wisconsin, Upper Michigan and Iowa.