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Driving Change

Our first annual Drive Electric event took place September 24, 2022. This event was held at CATS (Career Academy and Technical School) in Troutman, NC and offered an opportunity for members to learn more about driving electric and to test drive an EV, too! Over 200 people participated in the event! Additionally, we have maintained six EV chargers (four level two chargers and two fast chargers -- learn more about their difference here) and have plans to expand charging infrastructure in 2023!

Repairing Rather Than Replacing

Reducing Waste: Restoring/Rebuilding these devices extends their useful life and reduces waste. The result: We saved our members money, breathed new life into old assets, avoided the emissions footprint that comes with manufacturing new equipment, and skirted any potential costs and carbon footprint associated with supply chain issues.

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The Perks of Demand Response Programs

Did you know that heating and cooling costs accounted for about 34 percent of total U.S. energy usage for residential and commercial consumers in 2020? That's about 9.54 trillion kilowatt hours (kWh). The average EnergyUnited residential member uses about 1,200 kWh per month. When weather spikes and thermostats respond, the cost to deliver that energy goes up (think supply-demand). We rolled out our Demand Response programs Beat the Peak and Peak Time Perks, which help empower members to combat this. In 2022, we enrolled 660 new accounts and 892 thermostats, with over 2,400 thermostats and 1,700 accounts enrolled to date.

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Cool Benefits of Heat Pump Rebates

Thanks to money-saving incentives of up to $8,000, courtesy of the Inflation Reduction Act, heat pumps are an increasingly appealing way for people to heat and cool their homes. Despite the name, a heat pump can both heat and cool your home, taking the place of your furnace, air conditioner or both. Heat pumps don't directly burn fossil fuels, installing one reduces both your carbon emissions and your monthly bill. In 2022, EnergyUnited received 284 heat pump rebate requests and approved 239 of them. This amounted to 355,077 kWh of savings, or $61,500 worth in rebates.

Saving Paper

The drive to enlist all members in our paperless billing system has been several years in the making. And why? Making the switch to paperless billing is great for the environment, cost effective and convenient for members. As of December 2022, our cooperative had over 51,000 accounts enrolled in paperless billing. We save about $1 per member each month which adds up to about $612,000 in total yearly savings. Looking to make the switch? It's simple!

Sign up for My EnergyHub

My EnergyHub Savings

Access your account on our website or on our mobile app. My EnergyHub has multiple features that make managing your account as easy as possible. In addition, you can notify EnergyUnited of outages, get alerts and have access to other great features, right on your smartphone or computer. It truly puts the power in your hands to understand patterns in your energy usage and become a more empowered member. Join the over 60,000 members who already use (and dare we say love) this service.

Our 2022

ENERGY MIX

Does not include off-system sales.

Nuclear

Nuclear power reactors do not produce any carbon emissions, which offers an advantage over more traditional energy sources. Plus, nuclear energy is reliable and has the ability to produce energy nonstop.

Sustainable Communities

We are always investing in our communities and members, through scholarship opportunities, teacher grants or donations by the EnergyUnited Foundation. We care about the longevity of our communities and members. In 2022, nearly $400,000 was donated by the EnergyUnited Foundation to individuals, families, households and nonprofits. More than $45,000 was awarded to teachers across EnergyUnited’s service area through NC Bright Ideas. The cooperative also offered a unique opportunity for two students to participate in the Electric Cooperative Youth Tour program, which includes an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C. Plus, we awarded two $5,000 college scholarships through Empowering the Future, and three students were selected to attend Touchstone Energy Sports Camp at NC State University and UNC-Chapel Hill.

Youth Tour

Empowering the Future Scholarships

Touchstone Energy Sports Camp

EnergyUnited Foundation

The Long Game:

Securing a sustainable energy future

2022 presented several challenges on a global and local level. For starters, we all felt the impact of inflation and what that meant for our pocketbooks. Unfortunately, the energy industry was not immune to global price increases, and as many of you know, as an at-cost energy services provider, we really had no choice but to adjust our prices in 2022.

As a not-for-profit, member-owned cooperative our wholesale power costs represent approximately 70 cents for every dollar billed to our members. The remaining 30 cents represents the “facility charge,” which is a fixed charge that appears on your monthly bill. This way, members can see the true cost of energy. EnergyUnited does not mark up the cost of wholesale power to our members, it is essentially charged to our members as it is billed to us from our wholesale power providers. This allows EnergyUnited to partner with its members and help them minimize their energy consumption, which has no financial impact to the Cooperative. Another benefit of this partnership is that excess revenue is returned to the members at the end of the year in the forms of capital credits.

At EnergyUnited, we spend a lot of time and effort forecasting future load growth and energy prices that are incorporated into the cost of wholesale power. Overall the price of wholesale power increased approximately 25% on average in 2022, yet EnergyUnited was able to mitigate the impacts of this and maintain our energy rate decrease we implemented in January 2022 for the whole year helping many of our members during a very challenging time. We can honestly say that our forecasted projections clearly underestimated the cost of wholesale power in 2022.

So, what changed? The energy we provide to our members is generated by nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, some coal, but most of the electricity is fueled by natural gas. At the beginning of 2022 we projected that the average price of natural gas for the year would be approximately $4 a dekatherm, but the average price in 2022 was $6.45, an increase of over 60%! Overall, the price of wholesale power increased approximately 25% from our 2022 forecast.

EnergyUnited is constantly looking for opportunities to diversify our portfolio with alternative resources, such as other viable solar opportunities. We currently have a significant solar project underway that should be fully energized in early 2024 and we have several other viable solar opportunities. The price of solar energy has declined precipitously over the past decade, and EnergyUnited is making every opportunity to take advantage of this.

View the sustainability report archive.

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