OPU to issue energy savings report cards on Owatonna

OWATONNA — Owatonna Public Utility customers may no longer be in the dark about how much energy they use, thanks to a series of Home Energy Reports the utility plans to send out starting next year.

The two-year pilot program seeks to influence customers’ decisions and hopefully drive down their energy consumption. OPU will contract with a private company, Positive Energy, which will compile the reports from data provided by OPU, print them, and send them out in the mail.

OPU has done energy conservation projects for quite a few years already. Traditionally, the utility has used rebates and financial incentives to encourage residents to upgrade to energy efficient appliances.

But dollars and cents alone will not motivate people to reduce their energy consumption.

“To get to a higher level we have to get at behavioral issues,” said Roger Warehime, the manger of energy management and external relations at OPU. “It’s not just equipment that makes a difference. Do you turn off the lights when you leave a room? Do you fill your dishwasher before you run it?”

In this respect, one of the conservationist’s most effective tools is peer pressure, said Positive Energy President Alex Laskey.

“We are very compelled by what other people are doing, especially other people who are like us, who are near us,” Laskey said. “We like to know where we stand and how we fit in.”

The problem is that the average customer has no idea whether they use more or less energy than the next guy.

“The utility bill itself is three or four pages of gobbledygook and the only information that is comprehensible is this is how much money you owe and where you send the check,” Laskey said. “So virtually nobody knows whether their home energy consumption is efficient or not efficient.”

The Home Energy Reports will bridge that informational gap by giving OPU customers an idea of how their energy use compares to the nearest 100 houses. It will also offer a progress report and suggestions about how the customer can save electricity and gas, such as upgrading to a more efficient air conditioning system.

The project was inspired by the Next Generation Energy Act of 2007, a revision of earlier energy conservation legislation. Like all other utilities in Minnesota, OPU must show a 1.5 percent energy savings in annual consumption of both electricity and gas by 2010.

To meet this goal, Austin Utilities and OPU joined forces. The two utilities asked for a grant from the state to enact the Home Energy Reports. In the grant request, the total project cost between Austin Utilities and OPU is listed as $654,532, though Warehime said in reality it will cost considerably less.

“For OPU it will be about $200,000 over a two-year time frame,” Warehime said.

On June 30, OPU received word that its grant request had been accepted by the Office of Energy Security, the state office that monitors public utilities. The state government will kick in $120,000 total to the pilot program. Austin and OPU will split the grant 50-50. The remainder will come out of OPU’s energy conservation budget.

OPU has tentatively planned to begin sending out the bimonthly reports in January of 2009, after all the contractual issues have been ironed out. The program is expected to drive down energy and gas consumption by 2 to 5 percent, more than enough to meet the state’s requirements.

The Sacramento Utilities District in California launched a Home Energy Report program in April. Project Manager Ali Crawford said that the program had not been in existence long enough to produce hard results but the pilot has already encouraged conservation.

Customer reactions have been mixed.

“We’ve seen a gamut: Some people have called and said this is the best thing we’ve ever done, others say that they hate it and they don’t want to know what other people are doing,” Crawford said. “But it has started a discussion and that’s really great because I don’t think people were talking about energy conservation before.”

Clare Kennedy can be reached at 444-2376.

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