Madison Utility is Asking Customers to Conserve Energy

Madison - May 24 - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The state's smallest utility will count on support from all its customers to delay construction of a new power plant.

Customers of Madison Gas & Electric Co. will be asked to conserve energy as part of the utility's strategy for having enough power to meet rising demand for electricity in fast-growing Dane County, utility executives said Tuesday.

Speaking to more than 1,800 shareholders at the company's annual shareholders meeting, Gary Wolter, MGE Energy Inc. chairman, president and chief executive, announced a new energy-efficiency initiative, Power Tomorrow. MGE Energy is the parent company of Madison Gas & Electric, a utility with about 136,000 customers in Madison and several nearby communities within Dane County.

The initiative is designed to help customers increase their use of energy-saving devices such as compact fluorescent light bulbs, programmable thermostats and Energy Star-labeled home appliances, Wolter said.

If every MG&E residential customer replaced one 60-watt standard light bulb with a 15-watt CFL, which generates an equivalent amount of light, that would save enough electricity to power 1,800 homes a year, Wolter said.

Earlier this year, MG&E announced plans to shut down its 100- megawatt coal-fired unit at the Blount Street power plant in Madison by 2012. The Blount Street's natural gas-fired unit will remain.

The power generated by the coal-fired unit would be replaced by a 100-megawatt share of the two new coal-fired power plants under construction by Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Energy Corp. in Oak Creek. MG&E has bought an 8% stake in the Oak Creek project.