By Shana Becker.
Duke Energy’s Save-a-Watt program poses as a hybrid, charges for a Lamborghini and runs like a Pinto. The author of the July 31 editorial has been misled.
Save-a-Watt is a bad deal.
Energy efficiency technology is the cheapest, cleanest and quickest way to meet new energy demand. Duke’s energy efficiency proposal, however, is a lemon. It ties the price for energy efficiency to the cost of expensive coal and nuclear plants.
Duke is going to charge customers for saved energy at the rate of 90 percent of the “avoided cost” of not having to build a power plant. Say what?
Duke is going to charge customers for the money it doesn’t have to spend to generate new power because of customers’ energy efficiency.
Save-a-Watt doesn’t make sense.
The analogy in the editorial to solar energy is misplaced.
Solar technology is priced at the market value of solar technology, not the price of multibillion-dollar coal and nuclear plants that Duke Energy doesn’t build because it builds solar plants instead.
Energy efficiency is cheap, not expensive. But for an energy efficient light bulb that retails for $1.65, Duke would reap $18.23 under Save-a-Watt’s compensation scheme.
It is of no moment that Duke is paid only for verified efficiency gains. At its proposed rates, it needs very little achievement to make Save-a-Watt profitable.
And very little energy efficiency appears to be the goal.
Top-performing energy efficiency programs save an average of 1 percent of energy per year. Duke aims for 0.23 percent for its first programs.
The bottom line on Save-a-Watt is this: It grossly overcharges for the woeful energy efficiency gains it proposes.
The writer is the staff attorney for the N.C. Public Interest Research Group.
