Rates could save customers millions, analysts say

Customers of Duke Energy Progress could save $50 million a year by switching to a little-used rate, says a Wilmington firm that audits and analyzes utility rates.

Utility Management Services says most residential customers with electric bills of more than about $125 a month can save money on the R-TOUD, or time-of-use, rate schedule. The schedule charges more for electricity during weekday high-demand periods and much less at night and on weekends, when there is less demand for electricity.

Most large-use customers realize a net savings -- equal to about one month's bill -- over a 12-month period, according to UMS' analysis. Duke Progress serves Eastern North Carolina and the Asheville area.

Here's the catch: Duke Progress is phasing out R-TOUD for new customers on Nov. 30, and will replace it with a new time-of-use schedule that UMS says won't save customers as much money.

But Duke spokesman Jeff Brooks says the new schedule, R-TOU, has changes that customers will like.

Under the old schedule's on-peak/ off-peak prices, he said, some customers could see their bills actually go up. That happened if they weren't careful to run high-demand appliances such as the dishwasher or clothes dryer at night or weekend off-peak hours.

"The key to any time-of-use rate is aligning habits to the benefits of the rate," Brooks said.

The new schedule's peak, shoulder and off-peak times are intended to send "price signals" that motivate customers to pay attention to their energy use. Those who don't will not end up paying more than if they used a standard rate. "The flexibility will be more attractive to customers," Brooks said.

R-TOUD has been around for 30 years but has only 30,000 customers. Utility Management Services says another 500,000 customers could save money by using the rate.

The company's founder, Brian Coughlin, testified as an expert witness on behalf of business customers during Duke Progress' rate hearing before the N.C. Utilities Commission.

Duke CEO among Fortune's 50 "most powerful women"

Duke Energy CEO Lynn Good, who took over leadership of the nation's largest regulated utility on July 1, has made Fortune's list of the 50 most powerful women in business.

Good landed at No. 16 on the list, just behind business stars including Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg (No. 5) and Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard (No. 9). She's the highest-ranked new member of the 50-woman club.

Fortune writes that Duke's former chief financial officer, 54, was elevated to "to steady the ship after Duke's merger with Progress Energy, executive departures and an investigation (actually two) into whether misled state regulators about management of the combined company."

Good succeeded former CEO Jim Rogers, who will retire as chairman of Duke at the end of the year. Rogers agreed to retire as part of Duke's settlement of the merger investigation by the N.C. Utilities Commission. Lead director Ann Maynard Gray will replace Rogers.

Federal judge says coal ash needs regulation

In a partial victory for two North Carolina advocacy groups, among several others, a federal judge has ruled that the government needs to regulate coal ash.

The order was signed Monday by Judge Reggie Walton in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It grants in part a claim by 11 advocacy groups including Appalachian Voices of Boone, Asheville's French Broad Riverkeeper and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which operates in the Carolinas.

The groups say the order "marks the first step toward federally enforceable safeguards, monitoring and protections against coal ash."

Their lawsuit, filed in 2012, sought to force the Environmental Protection Agency to write new regulations for coal ash, the power plant byproduct that's been the focus of lawsuits against Charlotte-based Duke Energy.

The groups contend EPA has failed for more than 30 years to regulate ash. The issue burst into national consciousness in 2008, when a rupture at a TVA plant in Tennessee spilled 1 billion gallons of ash over 300 acres.

Worries about contamination of Mountain Island Lake, Charlotte's water supply, groundwater and other waters -- publicized by the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation and other advocates -- pushed the state of North Carolina this summer to sue Duke Energy over ash violations.

EPA, meanwhile, proposed federal regulations on ash in 2010 but has not enacted them.

This week's terse order rules in favor of the environmental groups' claims that EPA violated the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs solid and hazardous wastes, by failing to review the impact of ash on water and air quality.

The court ruled for the EPA on two other claims on review of standards that define hazardous waste. Environmental advocates say ash should be listed as hazardous because of the potentially toxic heavy metals it contains. The power industry says such a classification would raise the costs of handling ash by billions of dollars.

The court is expected to expand on the order within 30 days.
 

Interactive water-quality maps posted

The N.C. Division of Water Resources has created nine interactive maps that locate facilities or activities with water-quality permits.

The maps give the locations and descriptions of sites such as hog farms, municipal and industrial wastewater treatment systems, and stormwater facilities.

The maps can be searched by location, permit type, facility name, permit number and status, county or administrative region and river basin.

The maps complement the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources' Permit Application Tracker, which lets viewers follow pending environmental permit applications.

Summer interns power Carolinas energy sector

Energy firms in the Carolinas put about 600 interns to work this summer, creating a pathway for new entries into an aging workforce, says the two-state trade association E4 Carolinas.

Internships and cooperative education assignments give students a peek into prospective careers and let employers evaluate potential hires. There's some urgency to internship programs that span Charlotte area's largest energy companies, including Duke Energy, Westinghouse and ABB.

E4 quotes the Center for Energy Workforce Development as reporting that 46 percent of the industry's workforce -- 200,000 workers nationally -- might have to be replaced by 2015 as baby-boomers retire.

Many companies say they have a hard time finding qualified people for skilled positions. U.S. children, meanwhile, are lagging in science and math.

Carolinas companies say internships help close that gap by giving them a pipeline to talent.

Siemens Energy in Charlotte is known for its innovative partnership with Central Piedmont Community College and the Centralina Workforce Development Board to train new workers. SCANA's nuclear program hires 40 percent of its interns.

"Internship programs serve as outstanding human resources marketing tools," E4 quotes Joan Espinosa, who heads HR in North America for Charlotte-based SGL Group. "A positive experience with the company gives us a unique insight into what is coming out of the universities."

McCrory signs 'job-promoting' enviro bill

Gov. Pat McCrory signed a bill Friday to cut "burdensome regulation" that dissolves the state's water-quality division, relaxes groundwater standards and places a moratorium on local environmental rules.

McCrory had hinted he might veto the Regulatory Reform Act. Instead he signed it nearly a month after the bill landed on his desk and two days before a veto deadline.

Environmental pieces of the bill:

-- Require state agencies to review rules every 10 years to judge whether they're still in the public interest. Rules that are not reviewed will expire.

-- Let billboard operators take down trees outside defined cut zones on freeway ramps in order to make their signs more visible.

-- Ban until October 2014 new, local environmental ordinances on issues that state or federal laws also address -- unless the ordinances are adopted unanimously.

-- Extend the "compliance boundary" for groundwater contamination violations, previously 500 feet from the source, to the owner's property line. Existing compliance boundaries won't change. Duke Energy, which has been sued by the state over coal-ash pollution, and its critics disagree on whether the change will benefit the company.

-- Combines the N.C. Division of Water Quality, which policed water pollution, with the N.C. Division of Water Resources. Their combined staffs are expected to be about 15 percent smaller as the streamlined division adopts a customer-friendly approach to regulation.

DENR to see jump in "exempt" jobs

North Carolina's environment secretary, John Skvarla, scrambled late Friday to explain to his staff a big jump in the number whose jobs will be defined as "exempt," meaning they can be fired without cause or appeal.

House Bill 834, now on Gov. Pat McCrory's desk, increases from 1,000 to 1,500 the number of exempt positions in state government. "Exempt" includes managers deemed to be vital to the enterprise, but the term also embraces policy-makers who are supposed to carry out the governor's agenda.

Raleigh's WRAL reported that exempt positions at the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources would rise from 24 under former Gov. Bev Perdue's term to 167 under McCrory -- the biggest jump among the eight departments affected by the bill.

Environmental advocates say the move will force top DENR officials to toe the Republican-dominated legislature's view of regulations as job-killers. The legislature has cut budgeting and moved whole divisions out of DENR.

Skvarla, in an after-hours email Friday to DENR staff members whose jobs will become exempt, called it a "badge of distinction of which you should be proud."

"It was always silly to pretend that only 30 or so people in a department of nearly 4,000 were making managerial decisions," he wrote. "DENR has more than 600 managers, and the majority of those carry the responsibility necessary to operate our agency."

Skvarla says management changes will be based on "competency, efficiency, performance and changing requirements, not based on politics."

The exempt-jobs news came after legislators last month dissolved the Division of Water Quality, which polices water pollution, and rolled it into the Division of Water Resources. The change is expected to trim the combined staff by about 15 percent as top managers adopt a "customer-friendly" regulatory approach.