By The Public Communications Office
In this episode of “What’s Up, College Station?” Marketing Coordinator Grace Hallowell and CSU Energy Coordinator Patrick McIntyre talk about the utility’s new system to text outage notifications to customers and common-sense ways to trim your summer electric bills.
Transcript
Grace Hallowell:
What’s up College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell, and today I’m joined with Mr. Patrick McIntyre, our energy services coordinator. Hi, Patrick.
Patrick McIntyre:
How’s it going?
Grace Hallowell: It’s going well. We are in the dead of summer. We had Jennifer Nations on a few episodes ago and she was talking about how it’s gearing up to be another record-breaking hot, hot season for us. So with that being said, everybody is sort of using a little more electricity in their houses.
Patrick McIntyre:
They are.
Grace Hallowell: The air is going up. So what are some tips that you can share to help reduce our energy costs while still staying cool?
Patrick McIntyre:
Probably the biggest thing is monitor that thermostat. Each degree that you go up, you can save up to 5%. So we recommend using ceiling fans in rooms that are unoccupied because just the air moving makes you feel cooler and that allows you to raise the temperature up a few degrees and then save some energy.
Grace Hallowell:
So another concern I guess would be if we have it too hot during the day, is that going to kind of hurt our system or get things kind of out of whack?
Patrick McIntyre:
It can. We recommend don’t go above 80.
Grace Hallowell:
Gotcha.
Patrick McIntyre:
Because then it’s too much for the temperatures like it is for it to overcome. A couple other things you can do is make sure you’ve got clean filters in your return air. Return air is the lungs of your AC system. And so if you have clean filters in there, it’s going to work better. If you hadn’t had a system check this time of year, you probably can’t get on the schedule because they’re really busy. But that’s something you want to take a look at either in the fall or the spring going forward.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. And is that important to do yearly or every five years?
Patrick McIntyre:
I would say yearly. Say you just got a new system, you don’t need to do it really for a couple of three years. But after that third year, you probably want to do it every year.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. So what are some other tips to help reduce our energy bills?
Patrick McIntyre:
So if you’re going to do laundry or dish washing, you want to wait till the sun goes down because it usually takes the top off the heat. The sun goes down, the AC is not working quite as hard. And so if you’re going to generate more heat, you want to do it then. If you’re planning your meals out, you may want to do the slow cooker in the evening. That way you’re not doing it at the heat of the day, that kind of thing.
Grace Hallowell:
And is there a way to check to see how much energy you’re actually using in your home?
Patrick McIntyre:
Sure. Through the utility billing system, there’s a portal for each customer electronically. You can look and see daily, weekly, monthly. It’ll go back a year, compare year to date. I think it goes back 90 days. You can see 90 days’ worth of history.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes, I know. That’ll be definitely interesting for me to see for myself.
Patrick McIntyre:
Sure.
Grace Hallowell:
Because energy is one of those things where you don’t really think about it. You kind of set the thermostat to where you’re comfortable. But with the summer months, you get your bill in the mail and you realize we need to make some changes there.
Patrick McIntyre:
Well, and another way you can check, if you have the smart thermostat, then you have runtime hours on there. And so that’s something you can keep up with besides logging into your laptop and looking at your utility bill.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. Other exciting news from you guys. You’re getting ready to start a texting alert service in the near future here. So kind of tell us a little bit about that.
Patrick McIntyre:
Well, we bought a five-year subscription started May 1. The implementation started June 1. Last week we had some software folks come in, install the software in our operations center. And so we have the data collection connectivity now that we need to start the texting service. So that was finished last Friday. So the next things is, we need to finalize what our message is going to be, roll that out through you guys in communications and utility billing, and then get people to sign up with their mobile number where they can receive a text.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. And this is going to be really helpful for when there’s power outages. We typically try to, as best we can, share on social media whenever there’s a large outage, but sometimes things get missed if it’s 2:00 in the morning. So this’ll be really, really helpful directly to our community members right to their phone to let them know when there’s an outage, when it’s expected to be back on. So I guess the most important thing is update your information to your mobile number.
Patrick McIntyre:
Sure. The industry is that 95% of text messages are read in three minutes. And so that’s the reason behind what we’re trying to do. They’ll get a text message that says that you’ve been connected at some point once they upload their information. And we should be online by fall.
Grace Hallowell:
Okay. And if people have questions about anything, where can they go to learn more?
Patrick McIntyre:
I believe there’s a spot on the website from the city council rollout because they did a video for city council.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes.
Patrick McIntyre:
There’s a spot on the website for that. So cstx.gov. They can also call the utility number, which is 979-764-3660. And depending on what they want to know, then they’ll get sent to the right personnel.
Grace Hallowell:
Well, thank you so much for joining me today.
Patrick McIntyre: Glad to be here.
Grace Hallowell: All right. Well, stay cool.
Patrick McIntyre: Yes.
Grace Hallowell:
And that’s what’s up.
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