In June, officials at Mountain View Electric Association announced that its board of directors voted to increase some rates, effective July 1.For residential customers, the grid access fee (which appears on MVEA bills as the “facilities fee”) increased from $13.95 to $19.95 a month – and from $20 to $26 a month for residential time-of-day customers.”It’s basically a $6 a month increase, pretty much across the board,” said Darryl Edwards, manager of member services.The increase did not affect MVEA’s electricity rates for residential customers, which are still set at .11327 cents for the first 1,500 kilowatts per month and .09313 cents for additional kilowatts.But there were rate increases for the residential time-of-day program, irrigation and wholesale primary metering.Edwards said it has been five years since MVEA increased the grid access fee, which covers MVEA’s fixed costs of doing business; such as labor, training, parts and equipment – everything except the cost of buying electricity from Tri-State Generation and Transmission.Equipment costs keep going up, he said.A cost-of-service analysis and financial forecasts showed that MVEA needs to develop a buffer to handle an emergency or weather-related damage without sacrificing reliability, Edwards said. “Our buffer was so tight the past two years, we needed to do something to build it up,” he said.The extra $6 a month will help build that buffer.Web site offers energy calculatorsOn the MVEA Web site, there is a link (Home Energy Calculator) to three energy calculators: home, energy and appliances and lighting. The calculators are programmed with MVEA’s electric rates, as well as local natural gas and propane rates, so the results are good, Edwards said.The home energy calculator’s 19 categories allow customers to precisely describe their house, including type of house, year it was built, number of occupants and types of lighting and appliances.Once the home energy calculator establishes a base line, it can be used to calculate savings when changes are made, such as lowering the setting on the furnace thermostat or turning off a second refrigerator.There is also an appliance calculator comparing the energy usage of different types of electric appliances.For example, the calculator shows that a 50″ plasma screen TV turned on for four hours costs $7.24 a month. A 50″ LCD television costs $3.10 for the same usage.However, LCD televisions use more energy than tube televisions, and they are often accompanied by DVRs and sound systems that require added electricity. According to the MVEA Web site, a DVR adds $2 to $4 in electricity costs.The appliance calculator shows that replacing a pre-1993 19 cubic-foot, frost-free refrigerator with an Energy Star refrigerator of the same size saves $58.29 a year.Tri-State and MVEA provide an $80 energy credit for Energy Star refrigerators, plus an additional $80 if the old refrigerator is recycled, Edwards said.If some appliances aren’t listed in the calculator, MVEA loans out “Kill-a-Watt” meters through libraries and book mobiles within the service area. The meters make it easy to calculate how much it costs to use an appliance. Five meters are available from the High Prairie library in Falcon, said Kevin Holbrook, an MVEA account executive.The lighting calculator compares incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs.Replacing one 100-watt light bulb that is on five hours a day with a 27-watt CFL of equivalent light output saves $1.26 a month. Replacing 10 of those bulbs saves $151 a year.MVEA’s Web site includes a link, “Together We Save,” to Touchstone Energy Cooperatives’ Web site, which has room-by-room energy-saving advice tailored to MVEA’s electricity rates.A few tips:
- Beware of “phantom loads” – devices like battery chargers that look innocent but add to the monthly bill. Cell phone and MP3 player chargers draw power even when they aren’t charging.
- Turn off computers when they don’t need to be on or use their power management settings. A 300-watt computer that is on four hours a day costs $4.34 a month in electricity – or $26 a month if left on all the time.
- Turning down the thermostat on an electric water heater from 135 degrees to 110 degrees saves $146 a year.
