Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
All right, back at it. We go thirty three minutes
after the top of the hour, talking a little home improvement.
And not only is it improving your home in terms
of efficiency, is when you really take a hard look
at your energy cost. And we're going to do just that.
Ashley England, she is my guest. She is with the
(00:29):
TVA Senior Management division of Demand Management. How you doing, Ashley?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hey, I'm doing well. How are you doing?
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I'm doing fine.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I'll tell you what when it comes to energy, demand's
in the news now, isn't it big time? Oh?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Boy? Is it? Yeah, it's in the news. I'm hearing
it about it everywhere.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I'm sure you are. And before we get into the TVA,
really is this this is a worldwide issue, is it not? Oh?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean with the rise of data centers
and electrification you know, happening all over the world, it
really is. It's a it's a growing need. We need
more energy, that's what we're seeing.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Well, when we were all young and in school, we
learned about the TVA. But why don't you go ahead
and tell us a little bit about the TVA.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, sure, you know it. It's easy to forget what
we learned in fifth grade. TVA stands for this the
Tennessee Valley Authority, and we are the public outpower provider
for a seventh state region here in the southeast United States.
We provide power that serves nearly ten million people through
one hundred and fifty three local power company. So they're
(01:51):
distributing the power to the use customers. I think a
couple of things that I always like to remind people.
We are a federally owned agency, but we are self
funded through power sales, not tax dollars. And so we
are public power, and we partner with local power companies
to keep energy reliable, affordable, and to help people use
it more energy, more efficiently.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, so we're partners in this. I mean we as homeowners.
I was just kind of going through how things have changed.
I mean, we all grumbled a lot with the CFL
light bulbs and LED light bulbs. But boy, when you
just flash back twenty years now and you think, thank
God we made that change. You know, you can burn
(02:34):
seven or eight light bulbs for what we were burning
one light bulb. That's conservation, that's right, you know.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I kind of I talk about it with a colleague
it's to me, it's just about eliminating waste. You know,
why would you waste something when you don't you want
to use all of our resources to the best of
our abilities. And so yeah, I think with technology and
science and letting that that advance us. And yeah, we
all have a part to play. And even though sometimes
(03:04):
change is hard, I think it's usually it's often for better.
And so yeah, I think energy. I think if energy
efficiency is just not being wasteful.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And the TVA's interest in this is I mean, you
sell energy, but you want to make sure you've got
the energy to.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Sell too, right, That's exactly right. You know, for us
at least, our region is just growing rapidly. It's actually
going three times faster than the national average. And so
we take, you know, a multi prong approach to make
sure we can bring that low cost, reliable power. And
so one element of that is building megal walks, which
(03:44):
we are doing, you know, we're to prepare for all
this gross you know, we we've got a multi year
generation expansion plan. We're adding about six two hundred megawatts
of power to the system, and we've got three over
three thousand, seven hundred under construction right now, that's enough
power to power more than two million homes. But another
(04:06):
tranche of that approach is investing in energy efficiency and
demand response programs. And so that's what we're doing. You know,
we since twenty twenty four, we're investing one point five
billion over the next five years to help homes and
businesses become more energy at different Actually.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Can you just maybe you don't have the statistics to
really talk on that, but I mean, just from hearing
and reading news stories and talking to people, energy costs,
the grift has got to be going up for the
cost of energy to the people I'm talking to right now,
and that's homeowners, right, So we got to be mindful
(04:43):
of how we're spending our energy dollars.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, I mean, you know, here in the TVA territory,
we're doing everything we can to keep costs low to
make sure that we're not socializing costs for large industrial
energy users that are moving in. And you know, in general,
you're right, residential electricity prices across the US, they are
rising and the average bill is going up. And then
(05:10):
you think about also what's happening at the gas pump.
You know, those are energy costs. So there's just a
lot of things that we are driving that. You know,
we've got aging infrastructure, we've got frustrating fuel prices, we
got we've got weather. You know, weather is still the
biggest factor. And then the growing demand like we've talked
about from from data centers and so yeah, there anything
(05:32):
we can do to get our bills down to help
offset that I think makes the difference for everybody.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, I'll tell you what. It's got my attention. And
I've been in home improvement for my whole life, and
this is really in the last probably a year and
a half. It really has my attention on how I
manage my heating and how I manage my cooling, and
how I balance my humidity for comfort. And there was
(05:59):
a pureeriod and I'm our flagship stations not far from you.
It's in Cincinnati, Ohio, And there was a period I
didn't calculate exactly, but I'm I'm going to state that
in the last six to eight weeks we use nothing
in terms of heat or cooling until yesterday I turned
(06:21):
the air conditioning on and I said it six degrees warmer.
And so these those are little those are little things.
But if everybody really starts paying attention to how you're
going to make your home cooler or warmer, that can
add up to big savings.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
That's right, you know, And part of the reason why
you can probably do that is because you've probably done
the necessary things you need to see to weatherize the facilities. Right,
You're making sure that your home is sealed and that
you're you know, you've gotten you know, better insulation, the
better duckt ceilings, better air ceiling that's going to help
(07:07):
cool keep cool air in your home, keep warm air
out of your home, and then vice versa in winter.
And so those are the moves you have to make
if you want to stay comfortable. And then and then
you can really play with your HVAC system.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
There.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
I know that HVAC you know, temperature thermocet settings are controversial. Well,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Everybody's got their thing, and you know, if they want
to pay for whatever, I mean, they can. I mean,
I'm not going to dictate temperature settings. But really, when
you start playing with it, I realized this is and
then we're going to get into how important it is
to make sure I was talking about, you know, just
furnace filters, simple little process, but there's other things you
(07:48):
can do. Like I was paying attention to the heat
of the day, and maybe the heat of the day
was seventy eight. Okay, Well, I realized if about two
o'clock in the afternoon, if I close the windows and
my indoor temperature was seventy two and there was no
nothing going on, that the insulation would keep that temperature
(08:08):
at seventy two, maybe creep up to seventy three seventy four.
But if I left those windows open and it was
seventy eight outside and the sun was beaten in through
the screen, it might be eighty. So pulling down windows,
opening up windows in at night, I'd open them up,
bring in cooler. It'd be a little chilly at night maybe,
But then I'm buying all that time for tomorrow, and
(08:32):
it's worked phenomenally.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah, you know, and I love that. I love that
story too, because it's such a good reminder that not
everything you do for energy efficiency has to cost you money, right,
Your own behaviors can really make a difference. You know,
if you're closing the blinds and flipping on your fan
while you're in the room, Yeah, well that can make
a real difference. You know that those fand is going
to make the room feel two to three degrees cooler.
(08:58):
It's going to push that pool down where you can
reveal it. And so doing those things makes a difference.
It's easy to neglect them. I'll tell you the number
of times I see people running fans when they're not
in the room, and I think, oh, gosh, why that's
the way. Don't do that, you're not in the room,
turn it off, sure, but yeah, you're you're exactly right.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, HVAC tune ups. I talk about the importance of
doing that in terms of I think the latest data
is your HVAC system can lessen an additional twenty to
twenty five percent longer. And I always say, you know,
if you don't like the news you get after it's
(09:39):
been serviced, you can always get second opinions. What's your
take on HVAC tune ups? And you know, furnace tune
up in the fall and spring tune up for the
ac in the in the in the springtime.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, I think that tune up is one of the
highest you know, return on investment things that a homeowner
can do. I think, especially in light of what we're
talking about with some folks rates rising around the country.
You know, a neglect to your point from what I've read,
you know, a neglected system is going to lose you know,
about five percent of its efficiency annually. And you know
(10:16):
that come back compounds and so yeah, you know, you
get your sixteen cer rated system, but it's going to
effectively be performing like a like a eleven or twelve
year system if you don't take care of it. And
so you're exactly right that proper maintenance is going to
reduce the HVAC consumption annually. It's going to make sure
you have great airflow capacity and prevent any sort of
(10:40):
like cooling capacity loss, make sure you have proper refrigerant,
and make sure your duct work is all you know,
in ship shape, all of that, and then you think
about the filter impact alone, right, You know, a dirty
filter can increase your energy consumption by five to fifteen
percent just on the spot right there. And so if
you're not changing that filter, or if you're not getting
(11:02):
your tune up where your technician is helping you stay
on track with those things, the impact can become really significant.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, I haven't talked about duckwork ceiling in a while.
But I know I had my inspectors probably fifteen years ago,
and I was losing one ton of air on a
four ton unit. It was amazing just then by aluminum
taping joints, having a ceiling through the duckwork system itself,
(11:33):
I reduced it down to an eighth of a ton
and saw impact on that almost immediately.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean a lot of these things
they can pay for themselves in energy savings in very
little time. You know, Energy Star warns that about twenty
to thirty percent of the air moving through a duck
system could be lost if you have leaks or holes
or poorly connected ducks. And so again, you know you're
(12:01):
paying for the energy, you're paying for that air conditioning,
you want to keep it in your house. So I
think it's a real underrated measure.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Got a couple of minutes to go. Other things that
you can help us with to save energy would be what.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, so I you know, we talked about air showy,
we talked about that. H backtoon up. I do like
to remind people if they live in the TVA territory,
you can take advantage of TVA rebates for those upgrades.
We offer our fifty dollars rebate for h back tune
ups things like that. But I think some other really
easy ways are to pay attention to when you're using
(12:41):
your largest appliances, things like your dishwasher and your laundry machine.
You talked about, Hey, it's two o'clock, it's the peak
heat of the day. Let me may close my blinds
and curtains. Make sure you're not running those large machines
until later in the evening, after the peak heat of
the day. Those machines, in addition to using energy themselves,
(13:02):
they generate seats indoor too, and so your HVAC system
is gonna have to work harder to keep the indoor
temperature set to what you have it at. So run
those later. If you're in an area that does you know,
time of use charges, that can also help you save
money on your bill. But one way or the other,
it's going to make your home more comfortable and it's
(13:22):
going to make sure your h that system doesn't have
to work as hard.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Here's a little tip I learned also on the dishwasher,
there was you know, you turn it on and it
was auto, and then I'd press start and I had
that for four or five years, and one day, this
is a terrible story on me. One day I looked
at it, go, there's a sixty minute cycle. This other
(13:46):
cycle is like one hundred and twenty to one hundred
and fifty minutes. And my wife's and it probably doesn't
clean as well. I say, well, we don't know. We
haven't done it, and we ran that thing and that's
all we use. Now it's a sixty second or sixty
minute cycle, and I'm sure it made a big difference.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Oh yeah, absolutely. And then's you know another one on that.
If you're sitting here your dishwasher to run at night
while you're sleeping, go ahead and turn off the auto
heat function. Sure and let you know, let it pop
open an air dry again.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
That's well, as as usual, Ashley, you've been a great help.
Is there maybe a website with some additional information also
that the TVA provides.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah, it's energy Right dot com. We've got tips and
tricks and if you live in the TV territory you
can take advantage of our rebates. We've got a really
great DIY Home Energy assessment that you can take to
learn more about your home and get a customized report.
So yeah, we've got lots of resources and tools out
there Energy right dot com.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Very good. Well you enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Oh thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Saying to you all right, Ashley, thank you, bye bye.
All right, we'll open up the phone lines for your calls.
Our number is eight hundred and eight two three eight
two five five. You're at home with Gary Sullivan. Help
for your.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Home is just a click away at Garysullivan online dot com.
This is at home with Gary Sullivan.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Thanks.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Hey.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
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