Sussex REC's Currents October 2005

October's 2005 Articles

CEO: Celebrate Cooperative Month!	Energy Saving Hints
Meet Your Employees	Life Sustaing Equipment
News & Events	Cooperative Principle #6
Update: Solar Panel Rebates

Commentary By the CEO: Celebrate Cooperative Month!

By Robert Kolling
President & CEO

This month, the nation’s 900 electric cooperatives join the more than 40,000 cooperatives around the country to celebrate National Co-op Month. The cooperative form of business is making a difference in all aspects of life-utilities, housing, agriculture, health care, banking, insurance, and childcare. Cooperatives serve 120 million members, or four in 10 Americans.

Your co-op’s commitment to you begins with helping you keep your electric bill as low as possible. We deliver service to you at the cost of service. There are no hidden fees and no profits for investors in faraway cities. Any money that is left over stays in our community and is put to work strengthening the economic well being of our towns and neighborhoods.

People who know the community resolve questions about service and billing locally. Service means helping friends, neighbors, and business colleagues on Main Street and nearby-the people you see on a day-to-day basis. Service means reaching toward new horizons to make a life better for everyone.

Perhaps the most important question is: Are you aware of the special benefits and advantages you have as a member of a cooperative?

The principles that guide electric cooperatives call for us to educate, train and inform our members about the cooperative way of doing business so that you can contribute effectively to your cooperative’s development. Cooperatives use a variety of ways to educate, train and inform members about the cooperative difference.

The cooperative difference includes having member-elected directors who are members themselves and serve as the trustees of the members’ business. The cooperative difference also is a commitment to provide highly reliable electric service. That means we invest in the latest technology to ensure reliability and provide you with the highest level of customer service.

One of the biggest advantages of being served by a cooperative is that we work only for you; we don’t have stockholders expecting a big quarterly dividend. We are a not-for-profit enterprise, which means we’re working only to provide you with economical, reliable service. We do collect some money, which is figured into your rates, that is used for capital improvements. It helps us to build many of the expensive improvements we are required to provide. Any money collected in excess of those required funds is allocated to each customer account as patronage capital (See boxed insert). Patronage capital, or capital credits as they are often called, represents your investment in the cooperative and all its assets.

Side Bar Note:
Remainder of 1985 Capital Credits Retired!

September 2005 saw the retirement of the remainder of the 1985 capital credits - all $551,000! Capital credits were applied to current member’s bills as described in our Bylaws.

Former members will be receiving checks in December for their portion of the 1985 capital credits.

The credits represent a consumer-member’s equity (ownership) in the Co-op. It is used as working capital to maintain the system until the Board of Directors authorizes a refund. Refunds can only be made when they will not impair the operations of the cooperative.

Your local electric co-op is a company that cares about the people it serves. That service goes a long way beyond keeping the lights on. It’s neighbors helping neighbors. That’s what it’s all about-that’s the electric co-op tradition.

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Energy Saving Hints

Home energy costs are on the forefront of almost everyone’s mind this heating season. The following energy saving tips and common sense actions, gathered from a variety of sources including the U.S. Department of Energy, can save you money and improve your home’s efficiency for years to come.

Air infiltration:
• Test your home for air leaks. You can save 10 percent or more on your energy bill by reducing the air leaks in your home. On a windy day, hold a lit candle next to windows, doors, electrical outlets, and light fixtures. If the smoke travels horizontally, you have found an air leak that may need caulking, sealing, or weatherstripping. Seal large air leaks around plumbing pipes, wires, chimneys and other penetrations through your floors and ceilings. You can, additionally, find these from your attic or basement.

Bathroom:
• Fix running toilets or leaking faucets promptly. A continuously running toilet can use more than 8,000 gallons of water a year.
Install flow-restricting showerheads. A family of four can save 8,000 to 12,000 gallons of water a year. You not only save on the cost of the water, but also the cost of heating it.
• Use kitchen, bath, and other ventilating fans wisely. In just one hour, these fans can pull out a houseful of warmed air. Turn fans off as soon as they have done the job.

Cooking & Dishwashing:
• Don’t open the oven door to check on food any more than necessary. Twenty-five percent of the heat escapes each time you do.
• Cook in oven-safe glass or ceramic pans when you can. They allow you to set your oven temperature twenty-five degrees lower than the recipe calls for.
• Run your dishwasher only when you have a full load. Let the dishes air-dry instead of using the heat cycle. An average dishwasher costs $54 to $90 per year to run.
• Studies show electric dishwashers use less hot water than washing and rinsing dishes by hand. When you purchase a dishwasher, look for one with a short or light cycle. They require fewer fills and less hot water. Some dishwashers use up to 40 percent less hot water per load, and others allow you to reduce the temperature settings on your water heater. Both can save you money.

Heating System & Fireplace:
• Properly maintain your heating system. Heating can account for almost half of the average family’s winter energy bill. Make sure your furnace receives professional maintenance each year.
• Close fireplace dampers when not in use. A chimney is designed specifically for smoke to escape, so until you close it, warm air escapes, too - 24 hours a day!
• Install a programmable thermostat. The energy savings will offset the cost of a basic unit in less than a year. Programming your thermostat from 72 degrees to 65 degrees for eight hours a day while no one is home, or while everyone is tucked in bed, will cut your heating bill up to 10 percent.
Insulation:
• Be sure that your walls are filled with insulation and that your attic has at least 8 inches of insulation. Nothing can compensate for lack of insulation. Insulate your walls and attic if they need it.
• Insulate heating ducts and keep them in good repair to prevent heat loss. Your system can lose up to 60 percent of its warmed air before it reaches the register, if ducts are not properly insulated in unheated areas such as attics and crawlspaces.

Laundry:
• Cut back on the use of your clothes dryer. Not only is it a big energy drain, it can also suck heated air out of your house very quickly in winter. Hang clothes on a clothes rack to dry and use the dryer for towels and other heavy items.
• Always do full loads of laundry. A typical full load uses about 21 gallons of water. A small load uses 14 gallons. Several small loads use considerably more water than one or two large loads. If you’re replacing your washer, consider a front loader. They use significantly less water and ring clothes dryer for added savings.
• Use cold water for washing clothes.

Lighting & Miscellaneous:
• Install timers on lights inside your home to avoid coming home to a dark house on winter evenings. Motion detectors on exterior floodlights improve your home security while reducing energy costs.
• Use compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) in place of comparable incandescent bulbs to save about 50 percent on your lighting costs. CFLs use only one-fourth the energy and last up to 10 times longer.
• Turn off everything not in use.
• Twice a year — more often if you have long-haired pets — unplug your refrigerator and vacuum the coils in the back or underneath. Dirt and dust on the coils greatly reduces efficiency.
• Be sure your refrigerator door closes tightly and the gasket is in good condition. Check it by closing the door on a piece of paper. If you can easily pull the paper out when the door is closed, you need a new gasket. If you have a magnetic gasket, put a flashlight inside pointed at various areas of the gasket and close the door. If you can see light, you need a new gasket.

Windows & Doors:
• Open drapes and blinds on your home’s south-facing windows during the day to let solar heat in.
• Install storm windows over single-pane windows or replace them with double-pane windows with low-emissive (low-e) coating. Low-e coating on the glass reflects heat back into the room during the winter months, reducing heat loss by 25 to 50 percent. Look for the Energy Star label to save even more. In cold climates, low-e windows can reduce your heating bills by 34 percent, compared to uncoated, single-pane windows.

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Meet Your Employees...Jane Tavares, Engineering Representative

This month’s featured employee is Jane Tavares. A 21-year Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative veteran, Janie has held the positions of Billing Clerk, Meter Reader, Customer Service Representative prior to becoming an Engineering Rep. - a position she’s held for the last 13 years.

For contractors, electricians and new homebuilders, Janie is one of the first co-op employees they meet. She arranges for service requirements surveys to be completed, checks to see if staking sheets have been completed, makes sure we have cut-in cards for electrical work, as well as assists in balancing and maintaining the work between SREC, Picatinny and SREC Resources.

“Never knowing what the day will bring,” comments Janie, “ is my favorite part of the job.” “The unexpected happens and you just go with the flow,” she continues. This certainly creates the challenge of just keeping up, not only paper work, but also phone calls.

Raised in Middletown, Rhode Island and a kayaker, Janie enjoys the peacefulness of being on the water. She needs some peace! Janie and her husband Dan are the proud parents of 3 grown children and 4 very active grandchildren.

“I have been very fortunate to be able to have an exciting career – work with good people – and still be so close to home and be able to enjoy my children growing up,” remarks Janie. She is one of the people you can count on at Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative!

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Life Sustaining Equipment

The Cooperative maintains records of those consumers who utilize life-sustaining equipment, such as kidney machines, which are dependent on electricity for their operation. If possible, we notify those members of a pre-arranged outage to determine if it would cause a hardship.

While we’re proud of our excellent record of reliable electric service and work hard to keep it, remember that storm-related outages as well as other emergencies do happen and they take time to repair. We recommend that you have a contingency plan established before a situation arises. Consider battery back-ups or a stand by generators to run your vital equipment.

Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative uses a three-fold medical alert identification program. First, there will be a red label placed on your electric meter that states; “Medical Alert - Do Not Interrupt.” Next, a round red sign that reads “Life Support Customer” will be placed at the base of the transformer pole from which the member is served and finally, one will also be placed on the transformer itself.

If you or a member of your family is dependent upon such a piece of equipment, please fill in the information on the bottom. Send this along with a doctor’s note regarding the equipment’s operation to: Sussex REC, PO Box 346, Sussex, NJ 07461 or contact our engineering department at (973) 875-5101. Don’t forget, if any of the information changes, please let us know.

Name: _____________________________________________

Account #:____________________

Telephone #:__________________

Street Address:_____________________________________

Equipment Used: Schedule of Use:______________________________

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News & Events

SUSSEX / WANTAGE:

http://www.sussexfarmvisits.com/lusscroft.htm

VERNON:

COUNTY WIDE:

POSTING OF ANNOUNCEMENTS:
If you would like to list your clubs and/or organization event you can call, stop by or even e-mail us with the information. Currents is published monthly, all submissions must be to SREC by the 10th of the prior month of the event.

NOTICE: Do you get Currents at the end of the month or after a particular event occurred? Find out about events on-line at the beginning of each month at www.sussexrec.com/currents/currents.html. Events (and Currents articles) are posted at the beginning of each month.

E-mail to: info@sussexrec.com. We reserve the right to edit any requests.

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Cooperative Principle #6: Cooperation among Cooperatives

Cooperatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the cooperative movement by working together through local, national, regional, and international structures.

There is no time when this principle is more evident than when a natural disaster occurs. Hurricane Katrina devastated not only New Orleans, but also rural areas of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. Thousands of co-op line workers and supervisory personnel are there or on the way to help. Others are eager to find ways to help at home as well.

Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative, along with 7 other electric cooperatives in Pennsylvania, sent more that 30 linemen and supervisory personnel to help the hard-hit Pearl River Valley Electric Power Association (EPA) in Columbia, Mississippi. In addition to usual safety concerns connected to a natural disaster, cooperative personnel are keeping a sharp eye out for poisonous snakes - copperheads and water moccasins are reported thick in some locations. The photos shown are from rural Mississippi.

While electric co-ops both big and small are sending supplies and manpower, our nationwide branding partner - Touchstone Energy - has also stepped up to the plate with shipments to the disaster areas.

Jim Bausell, CEO of Touchstone Energy, reports that in cooperation with several national Key Accounts, they have been able to provide much needed supplies to the Washington-St. Tammany EC in Franklinton, Louisiana.

• Food Lion (a grocery store chain that operates more than 1,200 stores in 11 Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states), through its energy management team, shipped:
17,280/16.9oz Food Lion Spring Water,
14,280 / 20 oz bottles of Gatorade,
1,602/ 15 oz ready to eat Food Lion pasta dishes

• Through Lowes energy management team, it has earmarked a load of 300 ice-chests/water coolers located on a truck at a Lowes store south of Baton Rouge, for the Louisiana co-ops.

• Home Depot’s energy management team, also located 16 pallets of Visqueen (Visqueen is a plastic that’s black on one side and white on the other. It’s 85% reflective and 100% opaque building material used for reconstruction).

They are continuing to work on a list of needs recently communicated to us by the Mississippi statewide.

As you can see, Cooperative Principle # 6 is one that is lived on a very broad scale.

- Jaci Teune, Marketing Manager

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Update: Solar Panel Rebates

The NJ Clean Energy fund was created by the legislature and is funded from a mandatory “tax” or “fee” on each customer’s electric and/or gas bill. It is collected by the investor owned/Board of Public Utility governed utilities as part of their Societal Benefits Charge, the amount of which can be viewed under their individual tariffs filed with the BPU. Each customer of these utilities pays an average of $15 per year to fund the clean energy rebate program. With the number of customers in the millions, a large budget (currently $132 million*) is available for these types of rebate programs.

Sussex Rural Electric Cooper-ative and the 9 municipal utilities are not regulated by the BPU. As such, we do not charge a per kilowatthour fee to our members in order to support this type of program. Since we do not pay into the fund, our members are not eligible to receive money out of the fund. Therefore, at the present time, there aren’t rebates available to co-op members for this program.

Home Depot is now offering this service as part of their “Installation Services Program”. They have partnered with BP Solar of North America to supply and install solar equipment for the residential market. While rebates can top the $50,000 mark, consumers still can expect to pay as much as $25,000 or more for a complete package.

*Information taken from the Courier Post Online (http://www.courierpostonline.com), “Sold on solar energy”, by Eileen Stilwell, August 26, 2005.

SmallBizU is now available exclusively to Sussex REC Members. Click the link to the left to learn more.

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