Progress Energy faces challenging times creatively

FLORENCE — Signs of the weakening economy, and eventual upturn, don’t always come as predicted. In fact, sometimes it happens contrary to what one might expect.

For Progress Energy, the downturn was expected, but how it unfolded was not.

AT A GLANCE

Company: Progress Energy
Established: 1908
Address: 1755 Mechanicsville Road, Florence
Southern Region Vice President: Melody Birmingham Byrd
Number of employees: 10,922 (entire company)
Specialty: Supplying power
Web: http://www.progress-energy.com

“We weren’t blindsided by the downturn, but it was interesting to see how quickly it happened,” said Melody Birmingham-Byrd, vice president of Progress Energy’s Southern Region headquartered in Florence.

Progress Energy uses market data to plan for the future and noticed the residential growth market was an indicator of things to come.

“We knew there was a slowdown in the growth within our service territory. It happened very quickly and we had to respond quickly,” Byrd said.

The slowdown came opposite of what was expected, with the residential growth slowing first instead of the industrial sector. This was a result of the housing market crash.
“In 100 years of doing business, we hadn’t seen anything like it,” Byrd said.

Instead of sitting back and doing nothing, Progress Energy took steps to anticipate the worst and re-evaluated its plan on how to do business. The company looked at initiatives and all aspects of the business, including behind-the-scenes operations, connecting and disconnecting meters, administrative functions, optimizing operations and increasing efficiencies.

One of the ways Progress Energy was more creative was to share personnel across boundaries outside of their normal duties.

“It’s only possible to do that when workload is low. When it picks up again, we have to reassign individuals back to those boundaries and move employees to where the work is,” Byrd said. “We still haven’t experienced that much of a turnaround and we’re still seeing slow growth in residential and flat to declining growth in the industrial sector.”

Byrd said she expects 2010 to be an even more challenging year. “I’m not anticipating things will turn back to where they were two years ago within a year’s time. I think it will take time to get back to the level of growth and prosperity that we saw in the country,” she said.

With that in mind, the Progress Energy Southern Region has a strategy in place for the 13 counties it serves. A big part of that plan in 2010 is to continue to reduce the carbon footprint. Reducing the carbon footprint happens in three ways: by improving energy efficiency, by exploring alternative energy and by re-powering or modifying existing plants.

Public education is one way the company is trying to help improve energy efficiency, Byrd said. It’s being done through a low-income energy-efficiency program called the Neighborhood Energy Saver program. The program is a way to help customers better understand how they use electricity and to help them take control of their energy use.

Help will come in the way of Progress Energy contractors installing energy saving measures in homes at no cost to the customer, Byrd said. Measures include installing compact fluorescent light bulbs, programmable thermostats, insulating water heaters and other measures that can save the customer an estimated $95 a year.

Exploring alternative energy through renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy is another way to reduce the carbon footprint. The alternative energy can even be safely connected to the Progress Energy electrical grid. According to the company, the resources are important to the balanced approach to meeting the region’s growing electrical needs and helping to establish a cleaner energy future.

Lastly, Progress Energy officials said they also reduce the carbon footprint is by re-powering and modifying existing plants because of the slowed economy. This means that the plants would work more efficiently and have less environmental emissions.