Grayson Collin News
You may not think you need to have an understanding of energy demand and purchasing, but do you ever look at your energy bill and wonder what it all means? If your answer to that question is “yes,” then you might be interested to learn how demand impacts your utility bill.
To start, it is important to understand how electricity is made and how it is delivered to your home.
Before Grayson-Collin Electric Cooperative can send electricity to your home, that electricity needs to be generated by a Generation and Transmission cooperative (G&T). Once the electricity has been generated, it travels over high-voltage transmission lines to substations, where the voltage is reduced to a safer level. The electricity then travels over distribution power lines and finds its way into your home. So, while you pay your bill to us – your electric distribution cooperative – we don’t actually generate the electricity you use. That is the job of the G&T.
We do help to determine how much electricity our members need to power their homes and businesses, and you play a big part in determining how much electricity the G&T needs to create in order to keep the lights on in our community. That is where these terms “consumption” and “demand” come in.
Consumption is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh). Demand is measured in kilowatts (kW). A lightbulb “consumes” a certain number of watts, let’s say 100 watts per hour. If that lightbulb stays on for 10 hours, it “demands” a certain number of kilowatts (in this case, 1 kW) from the generation station producing electricity. Now, if you turn on 10, 100-watt lightbulbs in your home for one hour, you are still consuming the same number of kW. However, you are placing a demand on the utility to have those kW available to you over the course of one hour, instead of ten. This requires the generation and transmission plant to produce more power in less time in order to meet your demand.
Grayson-Collin Electric Cooperative purchases kilowatt hours from the G&T based on the average demand of our members. Peak demand refers to the time of day when the demand for electricity is highest. This is typically during the evening when families return home from work or school, cook dinner and use appliances the most. Using electricity during this peak demand period often costs more to both Grayson-Collin Electric Cooperative and to our members.
Demand is the reason your electricity bill fluctuates season to season and even year to year. Generating and distributing power can be a tricky and complicated business, but rest assured Grayson-Collin Electric Cooperative will work endlessly to meet the necessary demand to provide safe, reliable and affordable electricity to your family.
Recent News
Information for reporting your outage on the App
We have learned that when our members go to report an outage on our app, they have run into an issue. Members have received a message stating “There are no other account available on your service to report an outage.” This response happens because your meter has already notified our office that your home is without power. If you have any other accounts, like a barn or another building, that is currently not listed in the outage, it will allow you to select and report those meters as “out”. We want to assure you that though this can be a frustrating response – it just means that our office is aware of your outage, allowing us to work towards restoration as quickly and safely as possible. We have someone at our office 24/7 all year round and will be here to field your calls and help anyway we can.
903-482-7100
Concern from Members regarding high bills
Cold Weather Creates Higher Usage Resulting in Higher Bills
Recently Grayson-Collin Electric Cooperative has had an influx of concern from members about high bills. We understand that thus far we have encountered a mild winter – however, the cold snap we experienced caused a large spike in usage.
The graphs below show how cold temperatures can significantly increase energy usage. The red and blue lines are the day’s high and low temperatures. As an Arctic blast arrived on Jan. 14, these member’s DAILY usage (as seen in the green, orange and blue usage bars) nearly doubled or tripled their average usage. On average all these members had normal energy usage – until the cold weather arrived and stayed until the 17th. On Jan. 14, the high was about 22 degrees and the low dropped to about13. If the thermostat is set to 75, that’s a major 50+-degree difference during the day and 60+-degree difference at night that the heating unit must overcome. Compare that to the 25-degree difference an air conditioner must overcome to keep indoor temperatures at 75 degrees on a 100-degree day.
As the weather moved into our service area, all four members used approximately as much energy in those four days as they had the entire 13 days prior. For reference, one graph shows an entire electric house, second graph reflects a meter on a barn which also has a pool, hot tub, and a RV plugged into it, the third is an all-electric house with a wood burning fireplace with a pool, and finally a member with a gas fireplace, stove, and oven.
Although you may not have touched your thermostat, with outside temperatures dropping so dramatically, heating units must use more electricity to maintain the desired temperature indoors. We also want to emphasize that while heat pumps do use less energy and are far more efficient than space heaters(space heaters can also significantly increase your usage), heat pumps become less efficient and often switch to “emergency heat” or “resistance heat” when temperatures drop to the lower 30s. That can increase energy usage by up to three times!
You can find energy saving tips on our website www.gcec.net under the energy efficiency tab.
We are here to serve you and understand the frustration a higher than anticipated bill can cause. Our Member Services Department can be reached at 903-482-7100and our friendly MSR’s will be happy to discuss with you your bill and usage. We also offer free energy audits to help you better understand your homes energy usage.