Whether you’re lounging outside or catching up on home projects, these five tips will help you save energy — so you can put more money toward that beach trip and less toward your electricity bill.
Plant a shade tree. Go green — literally. In Pennsylvania’s climate, shading the south and west sides of your home from summer sun is the most cost-effective way to counteract solar heat and lower your air conditioning costs. In addition to trees, well-planned landscaping that includes bushes, shrubs, vines or ground-cover plants can reduce your home’s air conditioning costs by up to 50%.
Install smarter lighting. Your porch or front light can benefit from LED bulbs, which use up to 90% less energy than standard bulbs. For landscape lighting, consider low-voltage fixtures or solar-powered lights. You can also install timers or sensors so your lights don’t need to stay on all day.
Seal from the outside. To help keep air conditioning inside, inspect the outside of your home for any leaks that might let that cool air escape. Caulking around your windows is a simple and inexpensive way to seal air leaks when new windows aren’t in the budget. Check the weatherstripping on exterior doors to see if there are any gaps. A combination of new weatherstripping and a door sweep (to fill gaps along the bottom of the door) can save on your utility bills in summer and winter.
Reach for manual tools. Swapping power tools for a little elbow grease can save you money. Here are some ideas: Shape your shrubs with a hand pruner instead of a power hedge trimmer. Reach for clippers rather than the weed whacker. Opt for a rake over a leaf blower.
Cool down your roof. Check your roof for air leaks and insulate it from inside the attic as a way to save on your air conditioning bill. When it comes time for a new roof, choose a cool roof, which uses special coatings that reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat than a regular roof. Bonus: Decreasing your roof’s temperature may actually extend its life.
PPL’s Energy Efficiency Programs offer simple tips and tools to reduce electricity use inside and outside your home. Check out more ways to save.
Caring about the environment means more than just following rules and regulations.
It’s about doing more because you want to do more.
That’s why something like World Bee Day matters to us at PPL.
Right now, we’re working to come up with a program to grow pollinator-attracting plants on our own properties, as well as being able to offer pollinator seed mix to property owners when we’re restoring land after a construction project.
Pollination by bees, butterflies and other animals help produce 75 percent of the world’s food according to the World Economic Forum. However, declines in bee populations in several places, including North America, have scientists concerned.
In addition to pollinators, we’re engaged in other initiatives designed to improve the world around us. Our Community Roots program has provided more than 105,000 free trees to conservation organizations. We’ve also installed nesting platforms for ospreys across our service territory to help them stay away from power lines and ensure reliable service for our customers.
Our employees helped ensure that a large amount of electronics will be recycled – rather than end up in a landfill. Nearly 1,000 electronics items were collected during the first-of-its-kind recycling event organized by our Environmental Compliance department earlier this year.
Among the items collected:
279 cables or cords
143 television sets
122 phones
119 computers
86 stereos or CD players
59 DVD, Blu-ray and VHS players
The event was designed to help employees recycle items that are becoming increasingly difficult to recycle. Electronic waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world.
The recycling event is among a number of initiatives we’ve undertaken to benefit the environment.
We also recycle wood poles and materials like copper, aluminum, steel and mineral oil. We’ve distributed thousands of trees to community organizations, schools and governments through the Community Roots program, and we recently started a Future Environmental Leaders Scholarship program.
At PPL Electric Utilities, we’ve been watching with great interest the debate surrounding the future of nuclear power.
Proposed legislation currently circulating within the Pennsylvania General Assembly would require electric utilities to purchase as much as 50 percent of customer demand from nuclear energy as part of a new mandate under Pennsylvania’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act.
We’re asking the General Assembly to seriously consider the broad impact and the unintended ramifications this aggressive proposal would have on all of our 1.4 million customers.
The conversation surrounding how to achieve long-term market-based solutions to reducing carbon is essential to Pennsylvania’s energy future. Our parent company, Pennsylvania-based PPL Corporation, supports efforts to advance a cleaner energy future and has committed reducing its carbon emissions 70 percent from 2010 levels by 2050. Additionally, PPL Electric Utilities has begun to undertake several projects that promote greater incorporation and growth of carbon-free energy sources, such as solar, onto our grid.
No one disputes that nuclear energy is carbon-free, but don’t confuse narrow nuclear subsidy proposals with efficient and effective economy-wide, market-based efforts to move the state toward a low carbon future.
This proposal, if adopted, will make Pennsylvania less competitive, impacting every electric customer in Pennsylvania and raising the average price of electricity in the state for years to come. We have estimated that our customers, alone, will pay $140 million more each year to rescue a single energy source that already benefits from an existing robust market.
If electricity customers are asked to bear this burden, customers should expect, and legislators should require that regulators have oversight. As a regulated utility, PPL Electric Utilities is required to open its books to the state’s Public Utility Commission and demonstrate a financial need before we can adjust the rates we charge to customers. Nuclear plant owners who are asking our state government to give them customer-funded financial assistance should be required to do the same. Recent draft proposals do not include this much needed requirement and also provide a subsidy for plants that are profitable.
This issue has been the focus of limited discussions for well over two years. It is only recently that proponents have turned up the heat on the General Assembly to act swiftly. Lawmakers should not fall for the “crisis” label that has been intentionally created by the bill proponents.
We’re asking lawmakers to take their time and properly vet this issue through the process — hold hearings, call in all stakeholders and most importantly, demand numbers from those advocating for this measure. Consider seeking independent audits or financial verification from outside resources available to the General Assembly.
In the end, lawmakers need to strongly consider whether hiding a nuclear bailout in customers’ electricity bills is necessary and the best course to moving Pennsylvania forward.
The sight of ospreys nesting at the overlook by Wallenpaupack Dam has become something local residents have come to expect for more than 20 years.
So when the nesting platform originally put up by PPL Electric Utilities came down during a wind storm early in 2018, Meg Welker knew what had to be done.
The senior environmental professional, who has been with PPL for 22 years and has lived near the overlook for more than three decades, quickly began making arrangements for a new nesting platform.
Hours after the new platform went up in April, the ospreys were back, and Welker couldn’t be happier.
“I believe it’s our obligation to support the communities we work in because we’re truly a part of them,” Welker said. “And this is such a nice place to work.”
Welker has spent much of her career at PPL being a steward of the environment. A graduate of Penn State University with a degree in environmental resource management, she is responsible for protecting wetlands, watersheds and waterways at PPL projects that are designed to improve service and reliability to the company’s 1.4 million customers.
She has become the local contact for various state and federal agencies. She’s a board member of the Lake Wallenpaupack Watershed Management District, a nonprofit organization set up to protect the lake.
She helped lead the effort to add the osprey platform at Wallenpaupack in 1997. In the two decades since, about 40 chicks have hatched at the location. PPL has worked with the state Game Commission to build similar platforms throughout the utility’s service territory.
The platforms provide the once-threatened birds with an alternative spot to nest so they don’t have to build nests on high-voltage transmission line structures.
Welker said she’s never felt more proud of the work that PPL does, particularly its environmental efforts, which also include recycling old wooden utility poles, making use of a fleet of hybrid electric vehicles, and giving out thousands of trees to schools, community organizations and local governments.
“The investment we’re putting into our grid and what we do to get projects completed is critical to the success of our customers, our communities and our company,” she said. “And what we’re doing in the environmental realm is essential to getting that work done.
“And being able to do all of that in an environmentally responsible way … you just have to feel good going home at night.”
