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I am really excited about the potential of this program. It is going to be a lot of work for us but, if it is successful, it will enable the Bonneville Power Administration to defer $10-15 million dollars in improvements for a period of about five years. It will also enable OPALCO to defer $5 million in system upgrades for the same period. By deferring these expenditures, it will give OPALCO time to put aside money aside to pay for them and, hopefully, by the time these investments must be made, we will have been able to save enough money to reduce or eliminate the need to raise rates to pay for them. In addition, about 40 cents of every dollar you pay us goes to pay our power bill with BPA. The Load Management System can significantly reduce the amount that we will need to pay BPA each month. Deferring the $5 million investment will save about $500,000 a year in mortgage payments and about $100,000 a year on our power bill. All these savings come from a total investment of $200,000 on our part. BPA is kicking in another $500,000 toward the total project cost of $700,000. In order for it to work, we have to get half of our members to sign up. We are initially targeting electric water heaters. In some special cases, we will also ask to manage your electric heat, but our primary thrust is on water heaters. As I have told you before, small projects in Snohomish County and the City of Seattle have shown that over 90% of the people never notice when their water heaters (or electric heaters) are being managed by the utilities. But we will go even further than that. We will assure you that you won't notice it. If you feel that you don't have enough hot water or heat, we will adjust our management strategy for your home so that you don't notice it. Over the past couple of weeks, we have been explaining to our employees how the Load Management System will work, and they have been very enthusiastic about the program. By the time you read this, all of our employees should be very familiar with all of the aspects of load management and will be glad to answer any questions you may have. Now it is your turn. Call us, write us, or return the postcard that is coming with the letter explaining this program to you. We need to do between 500 and 1000 homes a year for the next four years. If we don't get enough people to sign up, we will have no option but to go ahead and make the system improvements that we are trying to defer. In order for this to work, we need half of our members to sign up. Don't leave it to someone else, sign up yourself. P.S. If you want to sign up for this program over the Internet, just send an e-mail message to , and I will get back to you. I've got my fingers crossed that this program catches on, our members like it, and we are able to defer these investments. If you have any questions, give us a call or just talk to any OPALCO employee.
Doug Bechtel
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