Conservation and Efficiency
Energy conservation is essential to the Commonwealth's future — and it's one of Dominion's top priorities. The General Assembly has set an ambitious goal of reducing Virginia's electricity consumption over the next 15 years by 10 percent of the amount consumed in 2006. And Governor Kaine's Virginia Energy Plan also calls for aggressive conservation measures.
Dominion supports these goals. The company also has received approval from Virginia regulators to begin conservation pilots this year that will test customers' acceptance of new energy-saving programs. They include:
- 1,000 residential customers in each of four different energy-saving pilots. The pilots are designed to cycle central heating and air conditioning units during peak-demand times, inform consumers about their real-time energy consumption patterns, promote programmable thermostats that allow customers to control their use of electricity, and educate customers about the value of reducing energy use during peak-use times.
- Free energy audits and energy efficiency kits to 150 existing residential customers, 100 ENERGY STAR new homes, and 50 small commercial customers. In addition, 250 new homes will receive energy efficiency welcome kits that include compact fluorescent light bulbs.
- Incentives for commercial customers to reduce load during periods of peak demand by running their generators to produce up to 100 megawatts of electricity. That is enough electricity to power as many as 25,000 residences at peak. This would be in addition to existing Dominion options in which commercial and industrial customers already reduce demand by more than 300 megawatts during peak-demand periods.
These pilot programs are a vital part of laying the groundwork for even larger conservation initiatives in the future. They will help us learn more about the type of programs our customers want - and help us create initiatives that will produce sustainable energy savings.
We also plan to put more information and technology in the hands of customers to help them cut their energy consumption, especially at times when power demand is highest — and most expensive to produce. For conservation to succeed, it needs the active participation of our customers. The more kilowatt-hours they save, the less electricity that has to be produced in our power stations.
Dominion also is sponsoring an energy efficient lighting promotion that offers customer discounts on compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs purchased at Home Depots throughout our service area. Dominion initially set a target of distributing a total of 1.4 million discounted CFLs through 2009 when it launched the promotion on Oct. 1, 2007. Because of the success in 2007, Dominion has since increased the 2008 and 2009 CFL sales goal to 2.25 million each year, for a three year total of more than 5 million bulbs.
Dominion customers would save $284 million and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 1.5 million tons — the equivalent of removing 268,354 cars from the road for one year — if the goaled sales of 5 million CFL bulbs were to replace 60-watt incandescent bulbs. In view of the program's popularity, the company is considering expanding the CFL promotion and offering discounted CFLs to other retailers. (> Learn more.)
Visit Dominion's energy conservation site for more information. And, view Dominion's latest print ad that talks about the company's commitment to making energy conservation a top priority.
In June 2008, the company introduced an aggressive energy conservation plan that would produce significant environmental benefits while providing customers with substantial cost savings.
An Energy Conservation blog also has been developed to attract ideas from the public about how to save energy and money while helping the environment.
