Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Glasgow, Your All Digital Cable Television has Arrived
8:30 AM | 
Posted by
Billy Ray |
If you
purchase your internet service from Glasgow EPB, you should know that, by the
end of 2015, we plan some really big equipment upgrades and those upgrades will
open the door to even faster speeds for our service, and we hope to be able to
provide those faster speeds at the same rate you are already paying.
If you
purchase your cable television service from Glasgow EPB, there are also some
big changes coming. These changes are necessary to make room on Glasgow’s
broadband network for the more robust internet speeds we have planned. For some
of you, the upcoming change will mean that an old friend or two in the house –
I’m talking about any older televisions that do not have a digital tuner, may
not work as it is after November 1. But we do have a solution or two that
should make this transition easy.
We are about
to convert all of our old analog television channels to a digital format. That
means we can condense several channels into the space presently being used by
one channel, and we can use all of that freed up space to allow the internet
services to flourish. But, if you have a television without a set top box, and
if that television is old enough that it has no digital tuner, then you are
going to need a DTA box from us if you want to keep that television going. We
are going to rent them for $3 per month, but you also might want to just
upgrade to newer television technology and save yourself the extra $3 per
month. That decision is totally up to you.
If you have
any television that has a picture tube, then it almost certainly does not have
a digital tuner. If you have an older flat screen television (think pre-2008)
it probably doesn’t have a digital tuner either. Remember, this only matters if
you presently run a cable directly to your set without using one of the EPB
set-top boxes. If you have a box then none of this matters to you and
everything will keep working fine.
Everyone has
a full month to ponder this and decide how they want to proceed. We are running
both our digital lineup and the old analog lineup together now, so you can
start moving toward the DTA box or toward replacing your non-digital tuner set
any time. But remember, after November 1 the analog channels will disappear as
part of our work to upgrade the internet service, so make plans for your
changes during October. As always, if you have any questions about this matter,
please give us a call at 270-651-8341 or email Eddie Russell at eddie@glasgow-ky.com
or Facebook message us through our page at https://www.facebook.com/glasgowepb
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
My August Bill in 2015 and 2016
Now that August is over, you might want to review your energy usage for the month, just like I am doing. Although we had a remarkably mild August, we still had a very steep peak demand back on August 4, and, had our 2016 rates been in effect, it looks like my bill would have been about $6 higher under the new rates. You can, and really should, check out how the new rates would have impacted your home or business and see your comparison, just like the one shown above for my home, by going to https://portal.glasgow-ky.com/login.php and logging in, or signing up if you haven't yet done so. We are sure that you will find the information interesting.
After you sign in you can click on the icon titled "New Bill" on the left side of the page and you will see your information just like mine above. At my house, the bill under the new rate would have been a little higher for one reason -- on August 4 at 3:00 pm my home was pulling 2.61 kW, and if I had gotten it down to 1.5 kW, I would have actually saved money under the new rate.
I was trying to keep my home's load down that afternoon as the weather was quite hot and EPB was using several methods to advise the community of a possible peak demand for the afternoon of the 4th. I made sure no one was running major appliances during the afternoon. I also set my thermostats to pre-cool my home in the morning so that I could comfortably raise the temperature setting to 80 degrees in the afternoon, but I still wound up with a little more load on peak than I wanted. It got really hot that afternoon and, even with my thermostat set to 80 degrees, the air conditioning kicked on during the 3:00 peak hour and that set my demand at the 2.61 kW shown above. When you check your bill comparison, you might find that you did better than me by keeping your load below 2.61 kW, or you might find that your home's air conditioning and other major appliances combined to give you an even higher Coincident Demand Charge. If you were higher, then that is why we are talking about this months before the new rate goes into effect -- so you can be making plans to have a low kW demand during Glasgow's peaks. You still have several months to practice.
We know that over 2/3 of our electric customers also have internet service. If you have access to the internet, we cannot give you better advice than to sign up for your personal EPB meter portal and login often to monitor your energy usage, as well as look at the old vs. new bill comparisons to help you understand how to change your energy usage in 2016 to minimize your energy costs.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
The New Electric Rates are Real, and Coming Soon!
We can offer no better advice for all Glasgow residents than to urge you to go to https://portal.glasgow-ky.com/ and sign up/sign in to the EPB Meter Portal which is has been created for every account in the Glasgow EPB electric service area. This real-time resource will help explain the new rates, give you comparison bills calculated using the old rate and the new rate so that you can see how the rate may impact you, and give you feedback on your efforts to reduce the all important "KW during our Peak" amount (the most dramatic difference between the old billing and the new billing rates).
The graphic shown here is from that portal for one of our homes. See that blue highlighted area? That means that during those hours there is a high probability that Glasgow will hit a new maximum kW demand for the month. We are making these predictions and showing them to you in this easy to read format to remind everyone to make efforts to reduce electric power consumption during those hours. The new rate will track your actual contribution to community peak demands and you will be billed accordingly.
So, what you should be practicing is your home's, or your business's response to these projected peak demands. Keeping your red line on the graph low during the peak hours will result in a much smaller electric bill in 2016 and beyond. You can do that by moving your thermostat to a higher temperature during the afternoon and delaying any other power intensive activity. Now is the time to work on your understanding of this new electric rate concept. Next year, this will all become very real. We want you to be prepared.
Friday, May 1, 2015
What the Smart Energy Technology Solution Project Award to Glasgow Means
By
now we hope you have heard that Glasgow EPB’s proposed Smart Energy Technology
Solution (SETS) was chosen for funding. That immediately means that money will come to our community, but it also means that our community will
reap long term benefits. Our proposed demonstration of what the next generation
of electric utility should look like was judged to be the most likely to
provide really new ideas for all local power companies. We are excited as a
team, and we are ecstatic that the community is working together to bring these
research dollars into the local economy. In
the history of our community, this direct injection of capital exceeds nearly
every other grant that has ever landed here. But perhaps now it is time to fill
the community in on more of just what this money is going to buy us.
This research was announced several years ago. From the very
beginning, the EPB team felt our community was perfectly situated to
demonstrate smart energy technology. The EPB mission statement dictates that we
provide our services “at costs that make them practical and improve the
standard of living for all of the people of Glasgow.” We take that mission
statement to heart in everything we do. Glasgow’s municipally owned broadband
network, and all of the other advanced technology deployed by EPB, flow from
our determination to accomplish that mission. Now the SETS will add to our
process of innovation in support of our mission.
The
basis for our move to build a broadband network in 1988 flowed from our
“infotricity” theory. Simply put, infotricity is the combination of broadband
networks (information) and electricity to produce a system that manages
energy - minute by minute. The goal is to contain consumption to the generation
capacity that can be operated most efficiently. This idea is a complete change
from the way we have operated electric power systems for the last century.
Since the beginning, we have allowed the random demand for electricity to
dictate the construction of a constantly growing set of generation plants. As
those plants grew, so did the cost of electric power to pay for the additional
plants. Even worse, we have really never paid for all of the costs (which
include healthcare, depletion of fresh water, and environmental impact of
acquiring the fuel necessary to run the plants) associated with our increasing
demand for electricity during only a few hours of some days.
We
proposed a project that connects infotricity theory, new infotricity retail
rates, and several elements of research already performed here in Glasgow, to
even newer technology ideas that are evolving presently. Glasgow EPB customers
will get the opportunity to apply for extreme energy make-overs to their homes,
ecobee Wifi enabled thermostats, GE Geospring heat pump water heaters, as well as
very new home battery systems that will store off-peak energy and supply that
energy to home energy needs during on-peak hours. We think we can install these
technologies, control them with new software that builds upon everything we
have already learned about predicting Glasgow’s monthly peak demand using the
best available weather prediction and load prediction tools, to prove that
Glasgow’s total electric demand can be reshaped to better fit within the
capacity of generation plants - with a much lower impact on our economy and our
environment. If we are right, Glasgow residents will benefit greatly and the
utility industry as a whole will have a model for each of them to follow for
their respective communities.
All
of this work is on a very tight schedule. After we get contracts with our
vendors executed, we will evaluate customers who indicate an interest in this
project. They will be asked to provide extensive data so that we can evaluate
what technologies, or ultra-efficient improvements, might work to reshape their
daily demand. Those customers determined to be a good match for the project
will be offered contracts that will cover the details of participation in SETS,
and those that choose to sign, will be receiving some or all of the
technologies we want to study.
Here
is how we think all of the elements of our SETS project will work together.
Every day Glasgow EPB will use weather forecasts and load projections to
attempt to predict the likely days and times for Glasgow’s monthly peak hour
demand. Using those predictions, we will help customers who agree to be a part
of the research reduce their demand during the predicted peak times by
instructing the water heater to heat water the night before, the thermostat to
pre-warm (or pre-cool) the house before the predicted peak, and the battery
system to charge with off-peak energy and discharge energy to the home during
peak hours. All of these functions should work together, using Glasgow’s
broadband network and EPB’s internet-connected electric meters, to dramatically
reduce the Coincident Peak Demand charge that is an element of the new
Infotricity Retail Rates.
Beyond
just helping Glasgow customers reduce their bills under the new rates,
reshaping a community’s total energy demand will help our energy supplier run fewer generation
plants to supply our needs. When other communities replicate our work, the
reduction in generation needs should come down dramatically. As fewer
generation plants are needed to supply our energy needs, the door will swing
open for the installation of more generation that uses renewable energy
sources, like solar and wind. Since Glasgow’s new Infotricity Rates will free
Glasgow EPB from the need to sell more energy to produce the revenue necessary
to support the maintenance of our infrastructure, Glasgow EPB will become a
resource for helping all of its customers explore these new technologies and
how they might be used for Glasgow homes and businesses.
Glasgow
EPB’s mission statement provided the basis for our ongoing interest in our
infotricity theories. This SETS project will provide us the funding necessary
to prove those theories and, in doing so, provide that improved standard of
living that our team is committed to accomplish. The SETS will not be the end
of our efforts in that regard, it is only our latest initiative. More of these
projects will surely follow, and we will continue to search for all
opportunities to make our community a better place to live.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015
This is a Really Big Deal!
We have exciting news! Glasgow has been awarded a large grant to the
Glasgow EPB and our partners, University of Louisville, Billstron, Move
the Peak, and Strata G through the Smart Energy Technology Project.
This award is the culmination of several months of collaboration among
our partners and intense competition with other distributors, and
will provide many new opportunities to explore innovative methods of
energy savings, sustainability, and the ways our customers interact with new retail rates and technology. We expect that this research will be replicated across not only the TVA
region, but the entire country. We thank TVA, our Board of Directors,
Mayor Doty, and our customers who provide endless support and
willingness to participate in continuing research efforts. More
information will be provided on this project in the near future.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Rates and Rewards
Over the past
couple of years, you have likely heard Glasgow EPB issue requests to curtail when
we predict peak electric usage. Many of our customers have responded and helped
us reduce community usage, but there is
a constant question of “Why should I make the effort?” Hopefully this blog post will shed some light
on that subject, and let you know how reducing peak energy usage will finally begin to deliver rewards.
Glasgow EPB generates no electricity.
All of Glasgow’s power is purchased from TVA, and TVA also sets our wholesale
rates. The rate we pay fluctuates each month due to varying factors relative to
TVA’s cost for production of electricity. For 2014, those rates averaged around
7 cents per kWh. That is true but for the one hour each month when Glasgow’s
electric power demand peaks. During that
one hour, TVA charges Glasgow EPB nearly $10.00 per kWh! However, Glasgow EPB charges our customers about
10 cents per kWh, and that rate presently does not vary. This follows the
general pattern used by all electric utilities before more capable metering
became available. As you can see, 3 cents is the average retail markup during
the majority of the month, however on the heaviest usage hour the Glasgow EPB
loses $9.90 per kWh sold. We doubt any business person would agree that this is
a viable business model.
TVA has now approved an innovative new
rate for Glasgow, and for those who are listening to our requests and
predictions, you will finally be rewarded for your assistance. Later this year, when we actually implement
the new rate, the energy rate will become nearly identical to the rate TVA charges the EPB, without the 3 cent
markup. All EPB electric customers
therefore will see a large reduction in the kWh rate portion of their bill.
However, for that one hour per month, you will see an increase to the
roughly $10.00 per kWh (depending on the TVA rate for the month). In order to
replace the revenue we will lose due to no longer appreciably marking up kWh, a
separate charge will be assessed for the cost of maintaining each customer’s connection
to Glasgow’s electric grid. This charge will provide the revenue necessary to pay for the poles, lines, transformers,
etc., necessary to provide service to each residence and business – no matter
how much energy a customer may use.
Over the last few years, our intense
research revealed that our existing rates resulted in many customers using
energy, and paying costs, that simply did not cover the costs associated with
serving them. Imagine pulling into the
service station behind a massive RV whose owner decided to fill it completely
full while gas was at the rate of $5.00 per gallon, then pulling off and
informing the attendant that you, in your economically efficient car, would be
paying his bill also. That is exactly what has happened during the entire past
history of electric usage across this country. We don’t believe it is fair, TVA
agreed, and we believe our customers will also resoundingly agree.
This rate will not take effect until
in the fall to winter time frame of 2015, however we wanted to start the
discussion, and education, relative to this new rate as soon as possible so
everyone would be well informed when the time came. We will talk to you more here, on our FB page
(glasgowepb) and in numerous other ways, about this large change in the way we
do our business, over the coming months.
In the meantime, if you haven’t already, why not sign up for your
individualized EPB portal that will provide you with real time usage data about
your service, and in the near future will show you what your bill would be
under both the current rate and the coming new rate. Just grab your EPB account number and go to http://portal.glasgow-ky.com/ to
register today.
Friday, March 6, 2015
A Very Cold Day in Glasgow
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We have spent the last couple of decades pursuing an idea that we call "Infotricity". We think that electric
power, combined with broadband communications and an IP address such that all
major electric loads can addressed, combine to form a new energy product -- infotricity, and that
infotricity will have a much lighter impact on our environment and our
wallets than the 100 year old product, electricity.
At the core of infotricity theory is the belief that loads can be managed such that peak demands can be reduced, in turn, reducing the amount of fuel needed to supply our lifestyle. Further, we will all be paying for fewer generation plants in an infotricity world. Of course, nearly all of our peers are quite certain that the idea is wacko. Some days they nearly have us convinced of that. Today is not one of those days.
Above see my home, our office, and our community. Note what is possible when we are brave enough to challenge the status quo!
At the core of infotricity theory is the belief that loads can be managed such that peak demands can be reduced, in turn, reducing the amount of fuel needed to supply our lifestyle. Further, we will all be paying for fewer generation plants in an infotricity world. Of course, nearly all of our peers are quite certain that the idea is wacko. Some days they nearly have us convinced of that. Today is not one of those days.
Above see my home, our office, and our community. Note what is possible when we are brave enough to challenge the status quo!
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