Dunson family saves with new EmPowerment rate

CB Dunson has been a member of Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative all his life. As a local business owner, husband and father to four children, Dunson doesn't want to spend his time poring over power bills every month. The Dunson household regularly received high power bills for years leading up to the summer of 2024. Dunson wanted that to change. 

Learn about how the Dunson family has saved hundreds of dollars on the new EmPOWERment rate in this member spotlight feature.

"I've been a part of the Blue Ridge co-op pretty much all my life, with my family and then on my own. For the past 20 years, we have had some high power bills. We contacted Blue Ridge about coming out and doing an analysis to see what was consuming a lot of power. Upon the gentleman coming out, we found out that our above-ground pool takes a lot of power even though it's not pulling a lot. But it does add up through the day because it's constant power. We decided, after they came out and did the analysis, to put our pool on a timer so it doesn't run during the peak hours.The next thing was getting our HVAC system under control. We installed the ecobee smart thermostats through the co-op. 

With the peak hours, you're only talking about a three-hour change each day. I was hesitant about it, but it has ended up working out well. Part of beating the peak is we pre-cool our home. In pre-cooling ahead of the peak time, we'll run the thermostat down to 68-67 degrees. As that timer changes for those peak hours, the temp does rise a little bit. But as soon as 6 p.m. comes, I've got it programmed to go back down. What was neat about it is I could run it as low as I wanted to at that point because it's off-peak hours, and the rates are great during off-peak, so you just modify your schedule based upon those three hours and make those adjustments.

Being on it for the past three or four months, we were able to save anywhere from $100 to $150 a month by just adjusting those items for those three hours and monitoring how we use other power, because a lot of the small appliances don't pull the power. You've just got to adjust those for three hours. We've liked it.

With six people in the house, and four kids that take a lot of money, we just looked for the bottom line where we could save some money, and this has helped. That was just adjusting three items, and who knows what I could save if it was a lot more. It's just been a great program so far."