The Care of Creation Committee hopes to save the church money without costing us a cent. We learned at the free NCIPL energy audit/workshop from the NC State engineer that oftentimes churches pay more energy fees than necessary due to not reviewing invoices in light of changes in usage and changes in rates.
Intrigued by this idea, CCC member Bunny Keenan began asking questions about our three-entity invoicing structure with Progress Energy. Her persistence encouraged other CCC members, Jeff Benninghofen and David Fortney to ask an outside specialist to guide us in evaluating our statements and make certain other energy improvement changes.
Dorrie Sieburg then enquired if NCIPL could guide us in this analysis for free. From there, we were introduced to a Progress Energy staff engineer who could help us. Fueled by his mantra “perhaps we can save money by not investing anything extra,” Vestry/CCC member John Johnson called to explore the possibilities. What he learned surprised him. Two of the three billing entities’ bills could be reduced by asking for a review by Progress Energy.
The first bill was changed to reduced fee structure right then, over the phone. The second bill included a fee structure that had not been formally reviewed since the 1980’s. During that time, there was a strong demand at one point and this bumped our fees to a higher category to include a “Demand Charge.” After discussing this bill, and noting that we had not had usage at that level since, Craig DeBrew from Progress Energy proposed to drop the fee to a rate structure called “time of service” billing. That means paying more at peak times and less at non-peak times.
The result for the two changes? If we had these rate changes in effect, it would have been $2,000 less over twelve months. (We note that it still means we need to conserve energy and continue to reduce usage even though we will be paying less.) Thank you to all the people who stayed passionate about this issue and whose persistence in resolving it will literally pay off!
The Care of Creation Committee meets once a month on Sundays at 10:10. Do you have ideas for making Every Day Earth Day at All Souls? All are welcome to attend!
To add your name to our distribution list or for more information, contact Dorrie Sieburg (dorriesieburg@gmail.com) or Vicki Hesse (vickihesse@yahoo.com).