In June EPB's sale of kilowatt hours was five percent lower than the month before, the EPB Board was told on Friday morning. It is the lowest kw hours sold in the past 30 years. The demand went down despite building and population being up. That is partially weather related but a big part of the decrease is because of increased efficiency in buildings, appliances and equipment that is powered with electricity.
During the past year EPB sold 5.94 billion kw hours. In 1993 sales were 5.48 kw hours and there have been years as high as 6.2 kw hours sold.
The interesting thing, said EPB President and CEO David Wade, is that in 1993 there were 50,000 fewer customers yet the kw hours sold were virtually the same as today.
EPB is constantly looking ahead for the best ways to serve its customers, he said. The customer base is growing in the Chattanooga area and the electric company has to keep up the capacity to service the new people moving to the city and the increased development taking place. The company is also actively working on ways to increase efficiency, reliability and resilience.
EPB is developing programs to continue increasing efficiency and ways to communicate it to the customers. Programs are available to help homeowners such as Energy Pro in which EPB provides an in-person analysis of a house and a detailed report of ways to increase energy efficiency. Also available is the Home Uplift program which provides free home energy upgrades to qualifying houses, up to $10,000. On average the improvements save $400 per year.
An agreement made a few years ago allows electric companies that buy power from TVA to generate up to five percent of what they use. At the same time technology that can store power became more affordable and efficient. The strategy for the next few years will be to establish EPB’s local energy mix.
In planning ahead, EPB is identifying locations and buying land where the storage equipment can be placed and determining where it is needed the most. These will be strategically located around the edges of EPB’s service area. In those places there are not as many ways to reroute electricity if there is an inter- adding to the resiliency and reliability of the electric service. Each storage area will have the capacity to power 400 houses if there is an outage. This year storage is needed in the western part of Hamilton County because of the development taking place at Aetna Mountain and other growth in that area. In the future, it is anticipated that storage will be needed in the northern part of the county near McDonald Farm.
TVA charges electric companies different amounts at different times of the day for the power it sells. The peak rate occurs when the demand is heaviest. The electric storage sites can help keep the prices that EPB pays to TVA lower by managing capacity. Power can be drawn from the new storage, versus buying power from TVA at the time of peak demand when it costs the most. This infrastructure will pay itself back in six-eight years, while keeping customer costs lower. The power storage units are assets that the whole community benefits from, officials said.
One of the challenges is projecting power generation including what type of generation to develop because some are controversial, said Mr. Wade. Another challenge is to get people to use electricity at the right time. Customers will need to be educated about using energy at times other than during peak demand. Often it does not matter to the individual when to use equipment such as when the hot water heater comes on or off, or when the battery of an electric vehicle is charged. But people have to know when the best times are, so education programs are being developed.