We spend all year thinking about ways to effectively monitor and reduce our energy usage, but that becomes more difficult during the holidays. We are often distracted with decorations and preparations, shopping, cooking, and planning. It can be easy to let your guard down, resulting in more excessive energy usage than you might have otherwise expected. 

However you choose to celebrate this season, United Power has you covered with the most up-to-date energy efficiency tips and tricks to prevent holiday usage spikes. A little forethought and diligence makes it easy to find savings during this time of year. 

Replace Christmas Lights with LEDs

Updating the lighting in your home is one of the quickest and easiest ways to reduce your energy usage and costs. Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are a well-known alternative to traditional lights, and are quickly becoming standard lighting. While many people are making the switch to these lights in their homes, they still might reach for the older, less efficient string lights they have always used when decorating for the holidays. 

Depending on how festive your holiday display is, the cost of using these lights can really begin to add up — perhaps to the tune of hundreds of dollars! Christmas lights that utilize LEDs are up to 90% more efficient and have a far longer life than traditional incandescent lights. 

Beware the Holiday Vampires

United Power has regularly talked about vampire loads, which are quickly becoming large consumers of energy. Vampire loads come from devices that continue to use energy even when they appear to be off, such as TVs, gaming consoles, and charging devices. Holiday lights can also contribute to these loads when they stay plugged in throughout the day while not in use. To avoid the additional energy usage, unplug lights during the day or before bed in the evening, or you can plug them into a power strip that can be turned off when not in use. 

Give the Gift of Energy Savings

Electronics have become a more common gift item over the past few years, many of which have the capability of using large quantities of energy. “Green gifting” is the practice of gifting electronics that are certified energy efficient, such as those marked by the ENERGY STAR® label. These devices meet or exceed federal standards for energy efficiency. This allows you to pass on the gift of energy savings to friends and family. 

For more energy efficiency tips to help you save on usage throughout the year, visit Managing Your Energy. 
 

Brighton, CO – United Power is pleased to announce the hiring of Jan Kulmann to the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. 

“Now, more than at any time in the cooperative’s history, having the right people in place in our organization is critical, and Jan brings a rich combination of education and experience to this vital leadership position,” said Mark A. Gabriel, United Power President and CEO. “She is the right leader for our operations transition as we step away from our current wholesale power contract.”

Kulmann is a licensed professional engineer who brings nearly 25 years of experience in the energy arena. Her background includes work in the utility industry and the oil and gas sector. She has provided direction and strategic leadership for the development of design and engineering standards and compliance programs for natural gas pipeline and electric infrastructure; the management of drilling, completion, and production facilities; and environmental, health, safety, and regulatory programs as well as strategic technical initiatives related to emissions reduction efforts, electrical power transitions, automation, process safety, and mechanical integrity. 

Before joining United Power, Kulmann served as Xcel Energy’s Senior Director of Standards & Compliance Program Development where she was responsible for the comprehensive design and engineering standards in order for the utility to achieve the clean energy transition while balancing risk, system reliability, resource adequacy, and safety.

Kulmann began her electric utility career at CenterPoint Energy in Texas, where she planned, organized, coordinated, and directed the utility’s relay and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) design group, electrical and structural design group, and substation construction design standards and materials group in the design and construction of distribution substation projects across the Houston metro area.  

Kulmann earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering, along with a minor in music performance, from Louisiana State University and a Master of Business Administration from Colorado State University. Additionally, she was re-elected to her second term as Mayor of Thornton, CO, in November.  

“We are excited to add such an accomplished and talented employee to our leadership team,” stated Gabriel. “Jan’s experience will be critical as the cooperative transitions to a distribution system operator. Establishing this new delivery model will benefit United Power members today and into the future. Controlling all the components of the power we deliver will help us ensure reliability and stabilize costs for all cooperative members.”

About United Power

United Power is a member-owned, not-for-profit electric cooperative, delivering electricity to homes, farms, and businesses throughout Colorado’s northern front range. The cooperative is one of the fastest-growing electric co-ops in the nation, and in June 2021 joined the elite ranks of cooperatives serving more than 100,000 meters. The 900-square mile service territory extends from the mountains of Coal Creek and Golden Gate Canyon, along the I-25 corridor and Carbon Valley region, to the farmlands of Brighton, Hudson, and Keenesburg. United Power is also a founding member of the NextGen Cooperative Alliance, which is dedicated to expanding the power supply and procurement options available to distribution co-ops and reforming the traditional generation and transmission business model. For more information about United Power, visit www.unitedpower.com or follow the cooperative on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.

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Transitions in life, both personal and professional, always have interesting twists. 

I lived the switch from conventional “hot type” typesetting to “cold type” primitive computers in my first career out of college as a newspaper reporter. The old way of making newspapers required placing individual letters — that were made of lead — into large, heavy frames in a reverse mirror image. The frames were then bolted onto giant printing machines where rolls of paper became the newspapers we read every day. The thunderous, dangerous, and noisy pressrooms gave way to an era of photo sensitive paper, waxed into big sheets, copied onto plastic and attached to the same giant printing machines. It was just the beginning of the change that would make everyone into a journalist — good and bad — with the ability to wirelessly send their stories anywhere in the world with the touch of a button. Unfortunately, it has sadly meant the demise of many printed newspapers.

The twists and turns and unintended consequences did not happen overnight. In fact, in the world of publishing, the death of local newspapers has been gradual over the decades, not a sudden crash and burn. This change has been a bit painful for those of us who still cherish the smell and feel of a Sunday morning newspaper. I have never been able to get used to the feeling of reading on an iPad; it does not give me the same warm memories as a paper rolling off the presses, making my fingers slightly dirty.

The energy transition has may parallels with newspapers that are rolling out over a quickening pace. The traditional “hot type” world of large power plants and massive transmission projects is giving way to smaller scale generation, power at the distribution system level, and thousands of households adding local resources. 

United Power is working through the ins and outs of our transition to new power suppliers and a new way of operating. We are moving from a single large supplier to more than a dozen — managing our risk through system diversity. We are looking at new ways of operating our system and trying to keep as much hyper-localized and home grown resources as possible. The hyper-localized model, including significant amounts of energy storage, is going to be required as the time to build new transmission is coupled with the closure of major coal plants. This is not a political question but the reality of the marketplace matched with the changing face of regulatory environments.

Hyper-localized generation has significant benefits for our communities as it keeps tax dollars in our region, brings a higher level of reliability and control, and reduces the stress on the transmission grid at a time when more and more electrification is occurring. Our new fuel mix will dramatically reduce carbon intensity rates as we blend natural gas, renewables, and storage while also making the best use of the Board of Directors’ investments in the distribution system over the decades.

For United Power, the transition will occur in phases. Knowing our low tolerance for risk, we have constructed a portfolio that in the short-term mirrors much of what we have with our current supplier in terms of capacity — albeit slightly lower in cost than what we expect it to be in the next 24 months — with a significant change in the mix of energy. As capacity becomes less expensive and markets develop in the short time beyond that window (2026-2027), we will become experts in managing and operating our system with the new tools in place.

As one of my business school professors always mused, “The future is already here, it is just not widely distributed yet.” At United Power we are committed to this transition for the benefit of our members.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions.