Seattle City Light’s Powerful Neighborhoods program to install free compact fluorescent light bulbs is back at work in the southern part of the utility’s service territory.
“Since we launched this program in 2010, we have served more than 30,000 households and installed more than 446,000 compact florescent light bulbs,” City Light Conservation Resources Director Glenn Atwood said. “This will reduce energy consumption by about 13 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year for the next five years and save each customer served $50 to $60 a year on their electricity bills.”
The area of focus until the end of 2012 will be Seattle City Light residential customers in Southpark, Highland Park, South Delridge, White Center, and adjacent areas of unincorporated King County to the west of I-5 and south of the Seattle city limits.
Powerful Neighborhoods started in South Seattle in 2010 as a pilot program and expanded to Seattle’s southern suburbs, part of the Central District, Shoreline and North Seattle. It is designed to reach out door-to-door to seniors, non-English speaking households, low-income residents and other customers who might not have participated in energy conservation programs.
“We are pleased to offer these services to our customers because saving energy is the most cost-effective way to meet the City’s future electricity needs,” Atwood said.
Seattle City Light has worked with Ecova Inc. and the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS), to hire and train installers, schedule home visits, and deliver and install the products.
All installers undergo background checks and drug-screening. Installers fluent in more than a dozen languages, including Spanish, Amharic, Somali, Vietnamese, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese, are available to visit homes where English is not the primary language. All staff carry Seattle City Light identification. Short profiles and photos of all installers can be seen at http://www.seattle.gov/light/install/installers.asp.
Installers will canvass neighborhoods door-to-door. If an interested resident is home, staff will install the energy efficient light bulbs and provide low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators or schedule a more convenient time to visit. If the resident is not home, installers leave a notice regarding how to contact the program to arrange a visit.
To qualify, a resident must live in a single-family home, a townhome, or 2- to 4-unit apartment or condo. To make an appointment, call 877-311-8752 or send an email to SCL_install@seattle.gov.
Response from customers has been overwhelmingly positive with more than 96 percent of those who completed a satisfaction survey saying that they would definitely recommend the program to their neighbors and friends.
Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States. It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to nearly 1 million Seattle area residents. City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.