2012-01_MM

January 2012

Manage your winter electricity bills Blue Ridge Electric offers the following to help you manage your winter electricity usage and costs: Be energy efficient An energy efficient home will help you reduce energy usage and costs. Significant swings in outside temperatures this time of year can cause your heating system to work harder — and use more electricity. Simple steps can help contain winter costs: set thermostats to the lowest comfortable level in winter (68 degrees is suggested); be mindful of the use of space heaters since they can use significant amounts of electricity; and open curtains on south-facing windows to let in the sun’s heat. For more efficiency tips customized to your home, take our online energy audit at BlueRidgeEMC.com or call our office for a free Energy Savers booklet.

Use Budget Billing This plan equalizes your payments for eleven months. In the twelfth month your account is “evened up” with a final payment or credit applied. Combine this with bank draft for even more convenience.

FlexPay Our “pay as you go” plan lets you purchase electricity in any amount you choose — daily, weekly or monthly — with no deposits or late fees. You can pay online, by phone, or in our office using debit/credit cards, e-checks, or cash. You can also receive account updates by your choice of text message, phone call, or email.

Tips for members needing assistance paying their bill • Our automated telephone system allows you to make payment arrangements that extend the due date for three working days. At $10 each, it’s much less than a $40 delinquent fee.

• Call us before your account becomes subject to disconnection and fees. By that time, no payment has been made for two months.

• If you are subject to disconnection, contact your local social service agency to find out if you qualify for special assistance. The cooperative’s Operation Round Up® program and other state and federal assistance programs may also provide temporary crisis assistance.

• If needed, call us to discuss an individual installment plan as soon as you get your bill.

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Balancing affordability and reliability requires selecting appropriate technology at the right time. Technology has advanced and is changing so quickly it is now a constant process to review and evaluate options to better serve you at an affordable cost.

For example, automated metering technology is fully deployed across the Blue Ridge system, providing better efficiencies in cost, service, and information. One way automated metering is saving money is through the use of remote meter reading. This alone is saving your cooperative nearly $1.4 million annually — a cost savings that goes toward helping keep your electric rates down.

Automated metering is also helping us improve reliability by responding faster to outages since this technology helps us more closely pinpoint the location of an outage. Our line technicians are able to respond even faster to repair and restore electricity.

While autoec u ti mated meterve Offi cer Doug Johnson ing is combining high tech with cost savings, our WorkSmart effort is an innovative, roll up your sleeves cost savings effort by all employees. When utility industry costs began rising a few years ago, our employees joined together to uncover all ways — small or large — to reduce expenses and ultimately hold down costs for members. In the past three years, our WorkSmart effort has created more than $2 million in sustainable savings! These efforts include large changes such as refinancing loans for lower interest rates, changing our medical insurance plan, and reviewing the need to replace an employee position when a retirement occurs to smaller steps such as reducing paper use and updating our copier service agreements.

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Powering our member’s lives, businesses, homes and communities is a continuous, long-range objective we’re always focused on at Blue Ridge Electric. With the beginning of the New Year, I want to share some strategic actions that will help us better achieve our mission of providing the most reliable electricity while keeping electric bills affordable.

f hie yC An Editorial b

Outlook for 2012

Finally, another very important way we’re working to contain costs for our members is through our two wholly owned, for profit subsidiary companies. You may be most familiar with Blue Ridge Energies, our propane and heating fuels subsidiary. Earlier this year we announced our second subsidiary, RidgeLink, which is a business-tobusiness provider formed to lease the extra capacity of the cooperative’s fiber optic system.

Finally, automated metering is benefitting members by offering you much more information than previously available on your electricity usage. When you sign up for our daily tracking service, MyUsage. com, you can see how much electricity you’re using on a daily basis.

Rather than getting a bill at the end of the month and trying to remember why it may be more or less than previous months, this daily information can be so much more powerful in helping you determine how to save energy in order to save money on your electric bill.

Based on our business plan the subsidiaries are expected to produce a consolidated net annual benefit of approximately $1.5 million to the cooperative. This is a significant value to members because every dollar in benefits the subsidiaries provide is a dollar members don’t have to pay. Combining the WorkSmart savings and the benefits of our subsidiaries is now worth almost three percent of our total operating cost. This has helped us keep rates stable and has also helped offset increases in wholesale power cost.

New, helpful options such as our “pay as you use” FlexPay option would also not be possible without our automated metering technology. FlexPay is helping many members better manage their electricity budgets by enabling them to pay in smaller amounts, whenever they want, using the telephone, Internet or coming in to the office. During 2012, we also will install payment kiosks in our district offices so members can pay by cash or card on a 24/7 basis.

With the difficult economic challenges in our service area, providing value to our members is more important than ever. And we’re working harder than ever — using technology and a variety of other approaches — to serve you with the most reliable electricity at the lowest possible cost, delivered with exceptional customer care!

That’s the cooperative difference we’re committed to delivering to you throughout the year!

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More News This is the first of a series of articles discussing our right-of-way and vegetation management program.

Right-of-way work helps ensure reliability, safety Severe weather that involves ice, wind and lightning, and the damage they do to trees are the major causes of outages. With more than 8,000 miles of power lines to protect, your electric cooperative works all year long on our right-of-way and vegetation management program to ensure our members enjoy the most reliable electricity possible. This effort allows Blue Ridge Electric to rank among the top of all utilities in reliability.

What is a right-of-way? It’s a corridor — or strip of land — along either side of the power lines. The vast majority of our system is made up of distribution lines, which carry power from local substations to homes and businesses. The right-of-way for this type of line is a total of 30 feet, or 15 feet on each side.

Blue Ridge Electric is somewhat unique as a distribution utility in that we must also build and maintain part of our own transmission system in order to get high voltage electricity from our power supplier to our mountain districts. The right-of-way for these higher voltage lines ranges from a total of 100 to 250 feet, depending on the voltage of the line.

Rights-of-way give us access to build and maintain the lines and facilities that provide reliable electricity to our members. They also enable our linemen to work safely during outages or routine work, especially when large trucks, poles or equipment are needed.

Many people don’t know that power lines carrying electricity can energize anything or anyone that gets too close to the line, including a tree or tree limb, ladder, or even a wet kite string. Maintained rights-of-way help ensure that trees don’t get close enough to power lines to energize them and while this helps keep electricity reliable, it also helps keep people and even animals from being electrocuted or severely injured.

Our right-of-way and vegetation management program combines several methods to control growth — all with the goal of balancing the beauty of our area while ensuring safe, reliable electricity. In the next article, we’ll discuss these methods and why this innovative approach benefits members.

Resolutions deadline: The deadline for members to submit resolutions to be considered for presentation at the 2012 Annual Membership Meeting is February 24. Resolutions should be addressed to Doug Johnson, PO Box 112, Lenoir, NC, 28645.

Proposed resolutions should clearly state their relevance to the cooperative’s mission, objectives and operations as well as how they relate to the cooperative’s membership.

A Resolutions Committee will review submissions for compliance with the Resolutions policy. At the board’s regular March meeting, the committee will make recommendations for any resolutions to the board. If approved by the board, the resolution(s) will be included with the cooperative’s mail ballot and proxy process.

The Resolutions Committee is composed of chairpersons of the cooperative’s district Member Advisory Committees and members of the Board of Directors’ Policy and Member Relations Committee.

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Members Only NEWS

~For Members of Blue Ridge Electric

Our telephone options have changed!

CORPORATE OFFICE PO Box 112 • Lenoir, NC 28645

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Doug Johnson EDITOR Renée R. Whitener PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR Susan Simmons DISTRICT OFFICES Caldwell (828) 754-9071 Watauga (828) 264-8894 Ashe (336) 246-7138 Alleghany (336) 372-4646 Wilkes (800) 451-5474 (800) 448-2383 PowerLine® (PowerLine® is an automated account information and outage reporting system.)

Toll Free 1 (800) 451-5474 (for members outside the service area) To report an outage at any time, call one of the numbers listed above.

OFFICE HOURS 8:30 am - 5:00 pm, Monday - Friday Night deposit available.

Visit us on the Web: www.BlueRidgeEMC.com

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Our members love doing business with us by telephone. Every day an average of 750 members call us, with 20 percent using our automated telephone member service options for fast, self-service such as making a payment or reporting an outage. That’s why we’re making you aware that the options you hear when calling Blue Ridge Electric have changed to better serve you. While you can still reach a member representative at any time by staying on the line, you now have even more choices for automated telephone customer service.

Members no longer must press “5” to hear service options. Members will now hear their options on the upfront message and will be instructed which numbers to press to connect them directly to the self-service area needed, including: Option 7: to make a payment Option 8: to grant themselves a payment arrangement Option 9: to hear general information such as address and website For the fastest way to report an outage using our automated telephone system, members should call our PowerLine at 1-800-448-2383.

Additional self-service options will be added in the near future to offer members even more options and convenience.

A winter safety reminder Do not use a BBQ or camp stove for heat. This equipment is designed for outdoor use only and presents significant safety hazards when used in any enclosed or partially enclosed setting. Besides the obvious fire hazard, they can produce high levels of carbon monoxide (CO).

Remember that you cannot smell or see CO. If you start to feel sick, dizzy, or weak, get to fresh air RIGHT AWAY. DO NOT DELAY. Carbon monoxide can rapidly lead to full incapacitation and death.

If you experience serious symptoms, get medical attention immediately. source: Consumer Energy Center

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