Blue Ridge Electric: Whats Ahead
For Immediate Release
Contact: Renee Whitener, Director of Corporate Communications, Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation, (828) 758-2383 ext. 3213; Pager:1-800-471-1323; or E-mail: Renee Whitener
Lenoir, North Carolina (February 13, 2003) – As a not-for-profit electric cooperative, Blue Ridge Electric’s mission is to serve its consumers with the most reliable, affordable electricity possible. As a cooperative, the consumers Blue Ridge Electric serves are what the utility refers to as “member-owners”.
“We like to say we have stakeholders, as opposed to stockholders,” said Renee Whitener, director of corporate communications. “We listen when our members speak and we emphasize responsiveness. In surveys, our members have told us that power reliability is priority number one, and that’s one reason you’ll see Blue Ridge Electric doing a lot of construction work and adding to our plant system in Caldwell County this year,” she said.
One of the major focus areas in Caldwell County for 2003 will be construction of additional transmission line and a substation in the Grace Chapel community. This addition is necessary to maintain reliable electric service for southern Caldwell County, an area that’s become one of the fastest growing on the Blue Ridge Electric system of over 7,000 miles of line—an amount that would stretch from California and back to North Carolina and up to Maine. The utility maintains the system to serve over 65,000 consumers in Caldwell, Watauga, Ashe and Alleghany counties, as well as portions of Wilkes and Alexander counties.
Blue Ridge Electric’s southern Caldwell County membership has increased five percent annually for the past few years. Much of the growth is due to developing areas on or near Lake Hickory and the Grace Chapel community.
The substation serving the area will be located on Falls Avenue, with the transmission line starting at South Caldwell Access Road and traveling to the Grace Chapel Road where it meets Falls Avenue. The substation will be serving much of southern Caldwell County.
Even though the cooperative delivered a 99.97 percent power reliability rate in 2002, “there is also a system-wide renewed focus on reliability in 2003,” said Jeff Benfield, operations manager for Caldwell district. While much of an electric system is computerized and information is available over computer networks linking the substations to central dispatchers at the cooperative, some problems are better detected visually or can be eliminated by manually examining the electric plant system, he explained. “Our linemen will walk every mile of our transmission line during four designated time periods during the year. Because some areas are better viewed and accessed from above, we will also be examining the system with the help of a helicopter twice each year,” he explained.
Other important developments for 2003 will be the completion of a power supply study undertaken by Chief Executive Officer Doug Johnson. Rising wholesale power costs affected the cooperative with increases of 15 percent—or $8 million—in the price of wholesale power from its power supplier, North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation. The increases came after wholesale deregulation of the electricity industry led to changes in the way NCEMC priced power to its members. Whereas Blue Ridge Electric formerly received a price benefit because it is a winter-peaking utility in a state where most utility’s energy consumption peak during the summer months, there is no longer as much value associated with this under the new way power is priced on the wholesale level.
“In very simplistic terms, power is now priced to us by NCEMC in a way that offers no advantage for leveling out power demand across the year,” said Johnson.
Budget cuts and other efforts by cooperative staff have helped, however, the power cost increases were substantial enough to demand a thorough and lengthy study to determine possible ways to reduce power costs. Johnson expects the study to be complete by June.
For commercial and industrial consumers in 2003, the cooperative is expanding a service called “Questline”, an on-line resource for research and information specific to the energy needs of this particular market. Questline delivers 24 electronic issues a year to commercial and industrial consumers, with unlimited access to an “Ask the Expert” hotline service that provides one-on-one tailored assistance from engineers, business development professionals and other energy industry technicians.
“We tested this service with our largest accounts last year and after receiving very positive feedback, we are opening it up in 2003 to all our commercial and industrial accounts—consumers which range from churches and convenience stores to hospitals and large manufacturers,” said Brian Crutchfield, Blue Ridge economic development director.
“Questline is an enhancement to existing resources we offer to our business customers—resources that include access to engineering services for major issues of businesses relating to areas from power quality to lighting,” Crutchfield said.
Blue Ridge Electric is also seeing record usage of its web site continuing into 2003. The web site contains much information about the cooperative and consumer services, and it also offers members the opportunity to simply view their bills and power usage—or pay their bill on-line by credit card or electronic check.
“With a monthly average of over 11,000 visits to our web site, and the number of members paying on-line over our web site increasing each month, we know this is a value-added feature our members like,” said Susan Simmons, electronic communications manager for Blue Ridge Electric. For more information, see www.BlueRidgeEMC.com.
