Knowledge is Power was Bluebonnet’s year-long marketing campaign to call members’ attention to the many useful, convenient features on our website, bluebonnet.coop. Each area of promotion was an automated feature that would save members time and money. We pursued all avenues of communication to help members learn more about our relatively new website - and gave them the chance to win a prize by taking actions, such as creating online accounts, paying bills via our mobile app or setting up recurring payments.
Transcript
Knowledge is Power was Bluebonnet’s year-long marketing campaign to call members’ attention to the many useful, convenient features on our website, bluebonnet.coop. Each area of promotion was an automated
feature that would save members time and money. We pursued all avenues of communication to help members learn more about our
relatively new website - and gave them the chance to win a prize by taking actions, such as creating online accounts, paying bills via our
mobile app or setting up recurring payments.
POSTERS,ADS
Each portion of the campaign was accompanied by posters at Bluebonnet’s five Member Service Centers. The poster designs were repurposed for use in print
advertising in Bluebonnet’s pages inside Texas Co-op Power magazine and in some area newspapers.
LOGOSLogos with similar design characteristics echoing the look of our website were created for each phase of the campaign, and appeared on the homepage of bluebonnet.coop, posters, social media, magazine
content, handouts, tri-folds, bill stuffers and ads to serve as visual cues to drive traffic and increase familiarity
with the elements of each marketing push.
MEMBER SERVICE CENTER DISPLAYSEach portion of the campaign was accompanied by
posters at the five Member Service Centers. Displays also included retractable banners touting the
overall effort and selected portions of the campaign; 5x7 spinners; handouts; and displays on video monitors.
Bluebonnet’s five member service centers displayed the ‘Knowledge is Power’ assets throughout the year.
TRI-FOLDS & BILL STUFFERS
Elements of the campaign also included bill stuffers and tri-fold handouts,
which were made available at the member service centers.
WEBSITEInformational pages on bluebonnet.coop taught
members how to use the online tools that were the focus of the yearlong campaign, as
well as providing information about giveaways associated with each stage of the campaign.
Throughout the year, each portion of the campaign was teased and linked via logos placed in a prime spot on bluebonnet.coop’s homepage. Contests and giveaways for items like Yeti coolers or iPhones were touted in the tease. Each was also featured on pages inside the site. The following pages show the landing pages for each leg of the campaign.
VIDEOSInstructional videos taught members how to
use the online tools that were the focus of the year-long promotional campaign.
The videos are on YouTube, Facebook and bluebonnet.coop.
MAGAZINEIn addition to monthly ads on Bluebonnet’s
pages of Texas Co-op Power magazine, feature-style news articles taught and touted
elements of the campaign.
MONTHLY MEETING
CONTACT US
OUTAGE CONTESTOnline account holders entered to win
ABOUT THAT GARAGE FRIDGEExtra ice box can raise your bill
SCHOLARSHIPS AWARDED48 area graduates get $120,000
HIDDEN BLOOMSAcres of plants bound for Texas stores
FEATURES
Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative produced the blue-bordered pages 18-25 in this issue of the magazine with content that is of specific interest or relevance to Bluebonnet members. The rest of the magazine’s content is distributed statewide to any member of an electric cooperative in Texas. For information about the magazine, contact Janet Wilson at 512-750-5483 or email [email protected].
Bluebonnet’s Board of Directors will meet at 9 a.m. June 16, at Bluebonnet’s Headquarters, 155 Electric Ave., (formerly 650 Texas Hwy. 21 East), Bastrop. Find the agenda and last-minute updates June 12 at bluebonnet.coop. Hover your cursor over ‘next board meeting’ on our home page.
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Inside
By Denise Gamino
DIME BOX — Several years ago, Virginia Shows hired a handyman to trim
some trees in her yard. He worked for a few days and then had a question: “Do you stand out there and smoke?” he asked. “I don’t smoke,” Shows said. “Why do you ask that?” “Well, you’ve got a big ashtray in your yard.” The 3-foot, silver canister on legs in Shows’ yard in Dime Box isn’t for cigarette butts. In-stead, it collects rain for the National Weather Service. Anytime it rains or mists, Shows goes outside at 7 a.m. and pokes a long stick into the tall rain gauge. She notes the measurement, goes inside and emails the information to the federal government’s regional Weather Fore-cast Office in New Braunfels. Then she’s off to her half-day job teaching literature to middle school students at the Dime Box public school. Shows is one of the federal government’s 654 official volunteer weather observers in Texas. They are part of the Cooperative Observer Pro-gram in operation since 1890. About 50 of these volunteer observers for the National Weather Service live in the 14-county region served by Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative. Nationwide, more than 8,700 volunteers gather weather ob-servation data for this weather service program. Most are motivated to serve because of a keen
With an avid interest in the weather and geared up to gather the details, thousands of volunteers — in Central Texas and nationwide — serve the 125-year-old Cooperative Observer Program
Weather watcher Virginia Shows keeps an eye on the sky next to her National Weather Service-issued ‘recording rain gauge’ in her backyard in Dime Box. (A close-up of its label, inset.) Shows is one of hundreds of volunteers in Texas collecting data for the Cooperative Observer Program.
interest in weather. The Cooperative Observer Program pro-vides the federal government with long-running records of weather observations at specific sites. The data is used in a variety of ways, including monitoring the drought, re-searching effects of weather and climate on crops, developing agricultural growing sea-son zones, and planning roads to withstand flooding. Shows and other Cooperative Observers “form the backbone of America’s climate record,” said Cory Van Pelt, a National Weather Service hydro-meteorological tech-nician in New Braunfels who supervises the volunteers. “Their observations came into existence long before routine aviation obser-
June 2015 BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE Texas Co-op Power 19bluebonnet.coop18 Texas Co-op Power BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE June 2015 bluebonnet.coop
4 ways to report an outage to Bluebonnet1. Call our automated outage hotline, 800-949-4414.
2. Use TextPower with a smartphone. To register, text BBOUTAGE to 85700 and follow the prompts. Once you have registered, report an outage on your mobile device by texting OUT to 85700. You can receive updates by texting STATUS to the same number.
3. Go online to bluebonnet.coop. If you have an online account, click Report Outage in the top task bar or hover over the Outage Report icon and click Report an Outage. Log in and follow the prompts.
4. Use our mobile app for iPhone and Android smartphones and tablets. Just tap Report Outage on the home page or log in to your online account.
Questions? Call a member service representative at 800-842-7708 during business hours. Or email [email protected].
Continued on page 20
Jay Godwin photos
ONLINE
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See our videos on YouTube!
20 Texas Co-op Power BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE June 2015 bluebonnet.coop bluebonnet.coop June 2015 BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE Texas Co-op Power 20A
Step-by-step: When an outage occurs, it triggers a carefully choreographed and rapid response Weather is the most common cause of power outages, especially in Texas where climate extremes are the norm. Birds, snakes and just about any animal that can climb a pole or walk a wire can also cause an outage. Sometimes, things just break or accidents happen. No matter what causes a power loss, the first step in getting electricity restored is notifying your electric provider. Bluebonnet has an automated, efficient system for reporting outages and restoring power. Every power outage notification we receive sets in motion a tightly choreographed process that ends only when power is fully restored.
1 A power outage occurs.
Members report the outage to
Bluebonnet in one of four ways:
l By calling our automated outage reporting system at 800-949-4414l Online at bluebonnet.coopl With the mobile app via smartphone or tabletl By texting BBOUTAGE to 85700 and following the prompts
2
The outage report
is sent to our control center, which is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Control center operators send a signal through the
power line to meters in the outage area to determine how many homes or businesses are affected and
to identify the possible cause of the outage.
3
4
Control center operators check
Bluebonnet’s automated vehicle locating system to see which
Bluebonnet employee or contractor is available in the outage
area to respond, depending on type
of outage.
5
A power restoration crew is dispatched. The crew could include a journeyman lineman, a first responder and a helper. Additional crews are called as needed.
6
Repairs are made. Restoring power
can be as simple as replacing a fuse, which takes
a few minutes, or as time-
consuming as removing a toppled tree and repairing
downed power lines or replacing a broken pole or faulty
transformer.
Ongoing: Day or night,
weekday or weekend, control center
operators dispatch appropriate personnel
to restore power as safely and quickly as
possible.
Members can
monitor power outages and follow the electricity
restoration progress via Bluebonnet’s outage
map viewer on the co-op’s home page at bluebonnet.coop.
7
vations at airports, so they give us a picture of the country’s weather and climate back to the late 1800s.” Shows carries on a long family tradition with her duties as a daily weather observer in Dime Box. Her maternal uncle, Gerhard Kissman, was the local weather observer for the National Weather Service from 1982-1988. Then, Shows’ mother, Alene Cottrell, took over the Cooperative Observer volunteer duties and sent weather information to the federal government for about 25 years before illness prevented her from continu-ing. Cottrell, who died in April at age 88, also served as the Dime Box post-master for more than 34 years. Shows, who shares a large back yard with the house where her mother lived, assisted her mother for a few years and then became the official Cooperative Observer in 2011. Around Dime Box, everyone likes to talk to Shows about the weather. Some-one always asks about rain levels. One of Shows’ friends teases her when she receives more rain than Shows. “Well,
it doesn’t matter because this is the of-ficial,” Shows tells her. “This is what goes to Washington.” Shows’ husband, John, also joked about her weather job before his death in 2007, sometimes threaten-ing to pour water into the weather service rain gauge. He had a ranch in Beat Five (a dot on the map between Dime Box and Giddings), and if the ranch got more rain than her backyard gauge, he always had an explanation: “It rains on the Baptists, and it sprin-kles on the Lutherans.” Shows grew up in Dime Box and has taught school here for 45 years. She spent more than 30 years with kindergarten students. She has an undergraduate and a master’s degree in education from Texas A&M Uni-versity. She has taught just about ev-ery subject offered at the Dime Box school district. “Cooperative Observers really do come from all walks of life,” the weather services’ Van Pelt said. “Farmers, ranchers, weather enthu-siasts, business owners, city govern-ments, federal agencies, state parks,
retirees, doctors, lawyers, teachers, TV meteorologists, current and for-mer National Weather Service em-ployees and many others. “A common thread is an interest in weather, and a sense of pride in serv-ing their country by providing critical data that helps their fellow citizens and becomes a permanent part of America’s weather history.” Van Pelt, who lives just north of Luling, is a Bluebonnet member. For a few years, Van Pelt served as an of-ficial Cooperative Observer for the weather service in his hometown of Sabinal, an hour west of San Antonio. When he moved to Alaska in 2002, his mother took over the weather-watching duties. He was hired by the forecast office in New Braunfels in 2012, just in time to present his mother with a 10-year service award for her Cooperative Observer work. Individual weather observers can make a difference, Van Pelt said. For example, during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, an insurance company refused
At the National Weather Service office in New Braunfels, hydro-meteorological technician Cory Van Pelt scans the sky next to a temperature sensor that measures the maximum and minimum temperatures during a 24-hour period. Cooperative Observers in the Bluebonnet service area report to Van Pelt, who lives just north of Luling. He is a Bluebonnet member.
Continued from page 18
Continued on page 20D Jay Godwin photo
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20B Texas Co-op Power BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE June 2015 bluebonnet.coop June 2015 BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE Texas Co-op Power 20C
By Lisa Ogle and Denise Gamino
Hurricane season 2015 begins on June 1. And since Atlantic Ocean hurricanes are frequent visitors to Texas, it’s never too early to prepare for a weather emergency.
Hurricanes travel with destination unknown. While we see them coming, they often make last-minute side trips that can catch us off guard.
Just seven years ago, Hurricane Ike slammed into the Galveston area with 110-mph winds, killing 59 people in Texas directly or indirectly, and causing an estimated $20 billion in damage. The September 2008 storm prompted the largest evacuation in Texas history, causing severe traffic jams as residents fled coastal areas, including Houston and Galveston, where 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed.
Hurricane Ike left millions of residents along the coast and in East Texas without power for weeks and even months. Flooding and storms disrupted large areas of Texas, so dry areas stepped up to provide shelter and resources for those displaced.
The residual effects of the hurricane left about 8,000 Bluebonnet members temporarily without power, mostly in Washington and Burleson counties. After power was restored to members there, Bluebonnet crews went to assist neighboring cooperatives who suffered much more extensive damage.
Planning ahead can save lives and homes, and offer peace of mind.
To help you prepare for hurricane season, we’ve gathered key resources, including what to do when the power goes out, which you can cut out and keep near your flashlight or on your fridge. You can find details about how to report an electrical power outage, a checklist of key items to have on hand during power outages, and information about creating a family plan for emergencies.
Remember: Evacuate if ordered to do so. Call 211 if you are not sure of the evacuation boundaries and shelter locations.
Planning ahead for hurricane season can save lives and property
Want to be a Weather Watcher?The National Weather Service does not currently need additional Cooperative Observer Program volunteers to monitor weather in the 14 counties served by Bluebonnet but encourages people to get on the waiting list.
About four Cooperative Observers resign or retire in each state annually, statistics show. The National Weather Service strives to have a volunteer weather watcher every 25 miles, and sometimes a new observer location is created. The weather service prefers that volunteers own the property where the government installs the monitoring equipment, but renters and leaseholders are also encouraged to apply.
To get on the waiting list, contact the regional Weather Forecast Office: 2090 Airport Road, New Braunfels, TX 78130, Attn: Data Acquisition Program Manager.
4 steps to take during a power outage1. Locate your home’s electrical panel and check the circuit breakers to see if a breaker switch is tripped or a fuse is blown.
2. Find out if your neighbor’s power also is out.
3. Visit Bluebonnet’s website, bluebonnet.coop, on a battery-powered laptop, tablet or smartphone. Click on the Outage Map button. A gray area with a black border represents Bluebonnet’s service area. The page updates automatically every 5 minutes.
4. If you have an outage, call 800-949-4414. If you’re signed up for TextPower, text OUT to 85700.
8 things to have when the power goes out
5 steps for creating a family plan1. Put together an emergency supply kit (modeled on the necessity items listed above for a power outage).2. Discuss escape routes from each room of the house as well as from your neighborhood.3. Make sure all family members know how to get in touch with one another even if phone service is disrupted, such as meeting at a designated place or reporting in with emergency responders.4. Create a checklist of what to do before you leave, such as boarding or shuttering windows, trimming tree branches that could hit your home, turning off electricity at the circuit breaker or fuse box, and turning off gas at the meter or tank.5. Plan what to do with pets and livestock.Sources: Texas.gov; Texas Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN)
1. Flashlights and spare batteries2. A battery-powered or hand-crank radio3. A cooler, ice, freezer packs (to keep food colder longer) and canned food (plus a manual can opener)4. A telephone that doesn’t need outside electricity to work5. Drinking water — at least a gallon per person, per day6. A first-aid kit and prescription medications (and copies of prescriptions), eyeglasses, hearing aids and other necessary health equipment7. Copies of important documents and records, including photo IDs and insurance papers8. Cash — credit cards and ATMs may not work in power outages
OUTAGE RESPONSE: Bluebonnet employees move fast when an outage occurs. After a recent thunderstorm in Brenham, Keith Knobloch, top right, secures power lines the storm had ripped off of a home. Working from the Brenham Service Center, Greg Wolf, middle right, uses his cell phone and computer to direct linemen to outages caused by the overnight storm. After restoring power to a Brenham-area home, Blake Schramm, right, waits for instructions about the next outage to restore.
Jay Godwin photos
bluebonnet.coop
By Denise Gamino
If you’re like 41 percent of Americans, you have a second refrigerator in the garage or workshop,
put there when you bought a new model for the kitchen. It’s convenient for storing extra beverages and hunting bounty, but is it worth the cost to your wallet and the environment? Consumer and energy experts agree: It’s time to turn that energy drain into a money gain.
A leftover fridge for leftovers could be costing you hundreds of dollars a year.
Second-string refrigerators cooling their meals in the garage usually are old and less energy efficient than newer models. If the garage is not insulated, the fridge requires much more energy to run in hot months and may not function properly in 40-degree or colder weather. In addition, a B-team fridge that is mostly empty uses extra energy.
Not ready for the ultimate fridge purge? Then keep it filled, even with bottled water so it cools more efficiently; clean condenser coils several times a year; open doors quickly and infrequently; and unplug when you don’t need it.
It’s easy to find out how much you’d save by getting rid of the “beer and deer” fridge/freezer. Check the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s online “Refrigerator Retirement Savings Calculator” online at 1.usa.gov/OiSQVV.
Proper disposal is important. Call your municipal public works department, refuse collector or a local scrap metal dealer. Many places may first require the refrigerant to be recovered, which could require hiring a technician with certified recovery equipment.
Keep the fridge magnets for the memories.
A refrigerator in a 90-degree garage uses 45-50 percent more energy than one in a 70-degree home.
Clean condenser coils several times a year, which could cut the refrigerator energy use by 15 percent.
Cold, hard facts Garage Fridge
—Denise Gamino
It’s lurking there, in the hot darkness, sucking up power, stealing your money. Beware the ...
On average, a refrigerator uses nearly 14 percent of a home’s energy, second only to the air conditioner, which uses 16 percent.
If properly recycled, only about 55 pounds of a typical refrigerator ends up in a landfill.
Cover liquids and wrap foods to store in the refrigerator so they won’t release moisture, making the compressor work harder.
During a power outage, refrigerated food should be safe as long as the power was not out for more than four hours and the refrigerator door was kept shut.
Keep your refrigerator temperature between 36 and 38 degrees Fahrenheit, and freezers between 0 and 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
More than 60 million refrigerators are more than 10 years old, costing consumers $4.7 billion a year in energy costs.
An estimated 170 million refrigerators and refrigerator-freezers are in use in the United States.
National efficiency standards effective Sept. 15, 2014, reduced the energy use of most new refrigerators and freezers by about 20-25 percent.
Opening the fridge too often or leaving the door open too long can cause your unit to use an extra 50-120 kilowatts each year.
On average, a 15-year-old refrigerator uses more than twice as much energy as a new ENERGY STAR refrigerator.
Properly recycling an old refrigerator can prevent as much as 5,500-20,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions over the next five years.
A fridge that is 10 degrees colder than necessary can eat up 25 percent more energy.
A top-freezer refrigerator uses 10-25 percent less electricity than a side-by-side model and less energy than bottom-mounted freezers.
A 20-year-old refrigerator or freezer can use two to four times more energy annually than a new model.
Automatic ice-makers and through-the-door water dispensers increase energy use by 14-20 percent and add $75-$250 to the purchase price.
A woman in Henderson, Nev., reportedly has 35,000 nonduplicated fridge magnets that she has been collecting since the 1970s. She told a Las Vegas newspaper that after she dies, she wants to be buried in her refrigerator covered in thousands of magnets, according to the book “Nevada Curiosities.”
Old refrigerators and freezers put a great strain on local power grids, especially during peak hours.
A refrigerator magnet will work in outer space, according to NASA.
Refrigerator size is growing ever larger, and some new models have a so-called door-in-door feature that provides a small compartment so you can reach often-used items such as beverages without opening the fridge’s main chamber.
Sources: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, Appliance Standards Awareness Project, Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, California Energy Commission, Consumer Reports, Cornell University, General Electric, Green Living Ideas, Public Utility Commission of Texas, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
bluebonnet.coop June 2015 BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE Texas Co-op Power 2120D Texas Co-op Power BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE June 2015 bluebonnet.coop
to pay some Kansas farmers for their drought losses. But a court used the rainfall records of a Cooperative Observer in the affected area to order the insurance company to pay the farmers what they were owed. “Without the data collected by that volunteer, the farmers may have lost everything,” Van Pelt said. The National Weather Service has two devices in Shows’ yard. The tall rain gauge that she checks daily is a govern-ment hand-me-down that was used by her uncle. Nearby is a solar-powered electronic recorder that detects changes in precipitation of one hundredth of an inch every 15 minutes. It looks like a small white rocket ship. Shows is 5 feet 5 inch-es tall, and the white gauge is about an inch taller. Once a month, she opens this device, inserts a USB flash drive and downloads the digital rain data, which takes about 15 min-utes. She then emails it to the federal weather office in New Braunfels. Before the weather service converted to digital reporting in 2011-2012, Shows and her mother had to use a more hands-on method of reporting precipitation to the National Weather Service. Shows measured rainfall at 7 a.m. and then reported by telephone to an automated weather data collection system. She punched in her Dime Box location code, 412462, then punched in the type of precipitation using this code: 1 for rain, 2 for freezing rain, 3 for drizzle, 4 for freezing drizzle, 5 for snow, 6 for snow pellets, 7 for snow grains, 8 for ice pellets and 9 for hail. She entered rainfall amounts using no decimals, so that 2.10 inches of rain was entered as 210. In addition, Shows previously had to keep a paper chart of the daily amount of precipitation that included the time of day when it rained or snowed the hardest. To determine that, “I just looked out the window,” she said. When there is frozen precipitation, Shows must chip ice from the tall, silver rain gauge and bring it inside to melt so she can measure the amount. If there is snow, she has to use a household ruler to measure the snowfall on a flat surface, such as her outdoor picnic table. Almost all volunteer weather observers use a computer to submit their data, but a handful in Texas and the other states still mail paper forms with weather information that must be manually entered into the National Weather Service’s data system, Van Pelt said. The weather service originally paid a small stipend to the observers because of the time — and sometimes gas money — needed to collect data. With automation and federal bud-get cuts, the program returned to its original volunteer-only roots. June always brings varying amounts of rain to Dime Box. Shows and her mother measured 13.26 inches of rain in June 2004, the highest monthly rainfall in Dime Box observation history. Just five years later, Shows measured 0.26 inches for June 2009, the third driest month in Dime Box history. She measured 39.33 inches of total rain for 2014. Shows has a personal interest in the Dime Box weather that goes beyond the family history of observing weather for the government. She and her three sons own a Dime Box ranch that’s been in their family for more than 130 years. “This community and farming and ranching are very im-portant to me, and the weather is crucial to our ranch’s suc-cess and our local economy,” Shows said. “It is an honor to serve the weather bureau and my community in accurately reporting our local results.” Just don’t try to tell her you got more rain than she did. n
Continued from page 20
Joe Stafford photo illustration
Watch an animated video showing how a refrigerator gets recycled at 1.usa.gov/1GRjn0s
The look and feel of the ‘‘Knowledge is Power’’ campaign drove design throughout the year. This ‘‘dust jacket’’ wrapped around Bluebonnet’s editions of the TCP magazine in April and as page inserts in May in advance of the co-op’s Annual Meeting. The insert and jacket were printed on heavy stock paper, to be pulled free and saved. The same handout was provided to some 1,500 Annual Meeting attendees part of a ‘‘goodie bag’’ that included all the elements of the campaign that had been rolled out at that time, among other materials.
BILL MESSAGINGEach monthly bill included a box giving
information related to that month’s portion of the campaign.
INTERNAL‘Powerline,’ Bluebonnet’s digital newsletter
for employees, featured information and employee-only giveaways related to the
‘Knowledge Is Power’ campaign.
Knowledge is Power promotional items in internal newsletter (PowerLine) February/March 2015
April B 2015
June 2015
July
September 2015
SOCIAL MEDIAOutreach on Facebook and Twitter kept
members informed and engaged with each month’s campaign promotion.
Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative - OUR ENERGY TRACKING TOOL: Lessons learned
Earning the title “Energy Nerd” probably requires a little dedication and skill. John Spiess, a Bluebonnet member in Welcome, said his family sometimes calls him that because of hisconcern about their power usage. Fortunately, he has a handy, free way to help him keep tabs on hishousehold consumption: the Energy Tracking Tool on bluebonnet.coop. The feature lets members see how daily patterns and weather affect their bills, down to the hour. Thetool is available to any member with an online account. As soon as they log in, their energy-trackingdata is available. In February and March, we encouraged members to check out the data-rich tool and then share whatthey learned. Those who did were entered in a giveaway of four “smart” Wi-Fi, remotely controllablethermostats. The winners, drawn at random from among all participants, were Denise Pardo of Martindale, LaurieCraig of Manor, Spiess and Abby Carr, an employee of VeriTrust, an information services company thathas an office in San Marcos. Here are some members’ comments, which may inspire you to use the tool, too.
My plan to reduce my energy consumption is to complete the replacement of incandescentbulbs, check the seals on my doors and windows, and turn off my computer when I'm away. –Cheryl Cato
We plan to unplug down to the basics (fridge and freezer) and take readings each hour as weadd on. And compare the new $10 bulbs with the others. – Cassie Griffin
I am going to make it a point not to turn on every light in the house when we wake and tounplug appliances after we finish using them. I am going to wash oversize loads instead ofseveral small loads and sleep in layers of clothing and blankets so that we don't use theheater as much. – Denise Pardo
As soon as the weather permitted, we've been opening windows to allow the cool spring
breeze to fill our home. It's been nice to see the usage go down dramatically! – Josh Owen
We first started using the Energy Tracking device to help cut cost and stay within our utilitybudget. In doing this, we switched to all CFL bulbs, made sure our appliances were EnergyStar rated products, replaced our AC unit and invested in rechargeable batteries to use insome electronics instead of using electricity. – Daphne and Emmitt Glass
I was amazed at how much the temperature affects energy usage for the day. It just goes toshow you heating/cooling are major energy hogs. I also like how detailed you can get on thistool, even drilling down to how much you used at a certain hour of the day, and how muchthat cost you. – Laurie Craig
I discovered that my cost per day doubled or tripled on real cold days and chalk it up toturning on the emergency heat when it drops below freezing and especially when it is raining.– Steve Pyrczak
It is great visual aid to lecture kids to leave the thermostat alone and cut the TVs off at night.– Paul Goll
The Energy Tracking Tool told me that that ham I heated in the oven cost more than if Iwould have served it cold and that the washing and drying of clothes is more costly than Ithought when electric is considered. Rugs now go outside to dry. – Louise Scott
I probably look at it daily just to see how much electricity I used the day before. Love to seewhat energy was used by checking the tool on those days that I am washing/drying clothes. –Connie Clements
Realized that when we are not home we use electricity by things we leave on. No more! –Paula Donald
We have learned to turn down our "hot water" heater, especially since warmer days are uponus now. – Don Nixon
My boss purchased the lock boxes and thermostats for all locations that have theprogrammable features. He watches to see if there are any spikes and will let our staff knowif he sees issues. – Abby Carr, VeriTrust
We are adjusting our temperature during work hours to see if it improved our cost and energyusage. We are also using the tracking tool to monitor it daily versus when the bill comes inand it’s too late. – Tammy Reed
Thanks to all of those who participated in our Energy Tracking Tool contest. Keep your eyes open formore giveaways throughout the year promoting the convenient tools on bluebonnet.coop. Learn about the Energy Tracking Tool here. Have a tip to add regarding what you’ve learned by using our Energy Tracking Tool? Send it to Lisa Ogleat [email protected].
Information and application form for second round of Bluebonnet Community Grants for area nonprofits nowavailable.
COMMUNITY
498 new membersjoined last month 14 counties served
$120,500 in scholarshipsawarded in 2015
Overview Grants News Community Representatives Scholarships Outreach
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Chilly temperatures here for a while longer, so take steps tocontrol energy use
2015⁄0227
Though Central Texans haven't endured single-digit or below-zero temperatures like many northern andmore than a few southern states this winter, we have had several weeks of freezing or below-normal
It isn't over yet. The weekend forecast calls for more cold weather and the first week in March is forecastto have lows in the 30s and highs in the 40s or 50s.
Weather is the biggest factor in electric consumption, especially for residential members, and that canlead to higher-than-expected electric bills - even if the cold only lasts for a day or two.
But it doesn't have to.
There are ways to monitor and control your electric consumption on an hourly or daily basis. The firststep is knowing how much power you are using and when you are using it, and seeing how temperaturesaffect your consumption. The easiest way to do that is through Bluebonnet's online Energy TrackingTool.
Bluebonnet members who have set up an online account can use the Energy Tracking Tool to see howmuch electricity they are using down to the hour, how much it's cost them and see what their bill isprojected to be at the end of their billing cycle.
If you don't already have an online account, it is easy to set one up. All you need is your accountnumber and the name on your account. Then follow the simple directions on bluebonnet.coop, starting byclicking on Register in the top right corner of any page on our site.
A temperature overlay feature on the Energy Tracking Tool shows the correlation between lowtemperatures and electric consumption as well as cost. You can compare your energy use now to that ofa mild spring or fall month, such as April or October.
Another way you can take control of your electric bill is by following a few, simple energy-efficiency tips.In winter, set your thermostat between 65 and 68 degrees when at home, and 60 to 65 when you'reaway. This is much easier and convenient if you have a programmable thermostat, which is typically easyto install and available at any home-improvement store. Also, open shades and curtains on south-facingwindows to let sunlight warm your house.
Our members might notice some relief beginning in February, not from cold temperatures but on theirelectric bill due to a half-cent reduction in the fuels portion of our electric rate, which amounts to $5 forevery 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity consumed.
There are two factors in calculating an electric bill: cost and consumption. And there are threecomponents to cost - the wholesale rate, the distribution rate and the fuel portion, known as the powercost recovery factor. As fuel prices fluctuate, particularly natural gas, Bluebonnet passes the savings orincreases to its members by raising or lowering the power cost recovery factor. The wholesale anddistribution rates are stable, changing only every few years.
With the half-cent reduction in the fuels portion of our electric rate, and members using the EnergyTracking Tool and energy-saving tips, the rest of this winter's and the coming summer's electric billsdon't have to take such a big bite out of your budget.
Learn more about this powerful tool by clicking on the Energy Tracking Tool icon on our homepage. Signup or log in to your online account to start taking control of your energy use, and taking the surprise out
of your electric bills. While you are online, share your observations about your energy use with us and beentered in a drawing to win one of four high-tech 'smart' thermostats (value up to $250 each). Just clickon the contest details box.
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Names of others (freelancers ororganizations) involved in the project, ifapplicable
Contract graphic designer Joe Stafford and contract website managerChelsea Beauchamp created all designs and website content for thecampaign
Describe your/the co-op's role in the project *
Bluebonnet launched a sophisticated new website in mid-2014. The site was a considerable improvement over theprevious website and offered many new automated features and tools. After the initial rush of interest in the site,pageviews/visits began to flatten. Analytics showed members were not using the tools as much as we wanted.Melissa Segrest, manager of communications and marketing, worked with communications staffers, the manager ofpublic affairs, member services and contract freelancers to create a year-long awareness campaign in 2015.
The goal was to increase the number of members who do any of these seven things: 1) create online accounts, 2) use our Energy Tracking Tool to follow their energy use, 3) report outages via ourwebsite or mobile app, 4) download (or update) our new and highly improved mobile app, 5) go paperless, 6) sign upfor recurring payments via credit card, and 7) request services (such as tree trimming or security lights) online. Wealso wanted members to spend more time on our website to see the depth of content and the numerous ways inwhich they can make their interactions with Bluebonnet quick, simple and pleasant.
Along with promotion in all areas of communication, we offered great giveaways to members who did what wewanted them to – from creating online accounts to paying bills via our mobile app to tracking their energy use withour online tool.
Describe others’ role in the project (Reference outside sources of material, including templates; pre-existingWeb tools and apps; information from outside groups, such as Straight Talk or Touchstone Energy; stockphotos and music, etc.) *
Senior managers and member services managers worked closely with communications staff to determine what onlinetool to promote each month; contract graphic artist/designer Joe Stafford created visual elements for the campaign(with use of stock images from iStockphoto); contract website content manager Chelsea Beauchamp helped createand upload pages about each promotion to the site; senior communications specialist Lisa Ogle handled the socialmedia content, much of the Texas Co-op Power magazine content and website content related to promotions andgiveaways; executive administrator Tina Medack helped in the acquisition and distribution of giveaways; DanielFowler in IT helped get information about the online tools and helped translate analytics; Adaptdev web and mobileapp developers provided details about the redesigned mobile app.
Circulation or Number of People Reached *
Number of Attendees *
Project’s Budget * $24,700, contractors; $5,700, giveaways; $2,700, bill stuffers;$2,000, posters and trifolds/handouts; $8,000, heavy stock wrap-around in magazine; $1,300, newspaper ads; $800, retractablebanners; $5,000, Adaptdev. TOTAL: $50,200
Target Audience(s) * Bluebonnet members with access to the Internet or smartphones whocan take advantage of the time-saving, simple, practical and efficientways to do business with Bluebonnet.
Restrictions/Limitations * Members who did not have Internet access or smartphones expressedsome displeasure that they could not participate in the giveaways.Thus, our final giveaway, which will be Dec. 21, is a blue Yeti cooler –and any member of Bluebonnet is entered to win.
Describe why you chose this type of socialmedia and how you used it *
Provide a brief summary that states thepurpose of the event, how the programwas implemented, and results and howthey were measured *
Provide a brief summary that states thepurpose, how the program wasimplemented, and results and how theywere measured using the RACEframework. Each component has its ownword limit noted below.
Research *
Website analytics showed us what members were doing on our website (and what they weren’t doing). Our memberservices department tracked the number of members who still receive paper bills and who are signed up for recurringpayments. Our Flurry analytic tool told us about mobile app downloads and use. In multiple cross-departmentalconversations, we identified the automated features we most wanted to drive traffic to and convert user behavior.Our membership is a diverse mix of rural and urban folks. There are those who use the Web to do all of theirbusiness and those who can but aren’t comfortable trying something new. And, there are still plenty of members whoget paper bills. As a result, we put the messages in as many different forms of media/communication as possible.Our Web developers worked with us in rolling out our greatly improved mobile app update and in helping resolveproblems related to online materials.
Action *
We bought a bounty of great giveaways for the year’s seven campaigns: Smart thermostats for those who track theirenergy use online; wireless weather stations for those who report outages online or via mobile app; iPhones for thosedownloading the new mobile app; Yeti coolers for those creating online accounts, signing up for recurring paymentsor requesting services online. And, for the paperless push, we gave away gift certificates to local nurseries and $100gift cards for local home improvement stores. To push the paperless message, all of our member servicerepresentatives competed to see who could get the most paperless conversions – and the winner received the sameprize: a tree gift certificate and a gift card. Contract designer Joe Stafford developed a look/feel for the icons anddesign of each of the seven campaigns that mimicked the look of our website, bluebonnet.coop. We created a longlist of deliverables for each campaign, including content on our website (including the homepage and vanity URLs);ads and promotional content on Bluebonnet’s pages inside Texas Co-op Power monthly magazine;posters/trifolds/handouts/spinners/video screen information on display in our five member service centers; billstuffers/bill messages/billing envelopes; social media; press releases and stories that appeared in area newspapers;smaller quickie giveaways on social media; instructional videos and our internal digital newsletter (includingemployee involvement in one of the giveaways). We looked at current use of the tools and set goals for each of thecampaigns, tracking progress over time.
Communication * We used every communication vehicle available to spread news abouteach of the eight campaigns, from traditional print (Texas Co-opPower magazine) and media releases, to lots and lots of social mediacontent, how-to videos, pages on our website with vanity URLs(bluebonnet.coop/recurring or bluebonnet.coop/mobile-app) that
were linked to from unique logos on the homepage; displaysthroughout member service centers, bill messages/inserts/envelopemessages and internal employee promotion.
Evaluation *
Paper billing decreased by almost 12 percent in 2015 (September to September) – and it didn’t hurt that our memberservice representatives pulled in almost 220 paperless converts. We’ve seen a 10.4 percent increase in membersenrolled in recurring payments. Bill payments via website or mobile app has grown by almost 16 percent. Othercampaign goals were harder to measure: Outage reporting only happens when there are outages, so that will requiremore time to determine results. Use of our Energy Tracking Tool, which allows members to track their energy useand costs by the month, week, day or by the hour, has increased, although our analytics currently only let usmeasure time spent on the page (which has increased by approximately 30 seconds). Downloading of the updatedmobile app and bill payments via mobile grew by 9 percent. We are still promoting the final campaign, requestingservices online (such as requests for tree trimming or security light repair). Content in Texas Co-op Power magazineand on bills/in bills/on bill envelopes are still the most effective forms of communication. But our social medianumbers have zoomed in the last year, and a solid component of that was the campaign and extra smaller giveawayson Facebook. As a result, in 2016 we plan to study more closely targeted demographic groups to learn the best waysof delivering information (probably adding targeted emails). We also plan to explore more Spanish-languagematerials (handouts and online).
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Carol Crabtree · 16:33 on 30 Dec 2015REVIEWED 12/30/15-KAC
