People the world over will be going dark during Earth Hour Saturday night, but SaskPower says that there are plenty of ways to conserve power during the other 8,759 hours in the year.
“We’re proud to join our customers and our employees to try to reduce our carbon footprint. Here at SaskPower we’re going to shut off all non-essential lights at head office in Regina in support of Earth Hour,” said Joel Cherry, consultant, media relations and issues management with SaskPower.
Internally SaskPower is encouraging their employees to take part in their own homes and will be sharing information and messages on social media encouraging the public to also take part.
Earth Hour will take place from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday. The event began as a lights-off event in Sydney, Australia in 2007 and has subsequently grown with the goal of raising awareness about the effects of energy consumption on the environment.
“If everyone uses less power we can meet our need to produce power more effectively,” Cherry said. “It reduces the strain on our system in times of high demand, such as in the winter.
“Generally speaking, power conservation is good for our network because it reduces strain. It’s also good for individuals because it reduces their power bills as well.”
For their part, SaskPower is trying to make information and tools available to their customers to help them reduce their consumption. They also have a number of programs and incentives in place for home owners and businesses to incentivize having a greener energy plan.
“On our website we have a ton of efficiency programs and tips that are available for people,” Cherry said. “There’s just about as many ways to save power as there are to use it. We have energy assessment tools online for both home and businesses. There’s a lot of good information there.”
Those tips, programs, and incentives seem to be bearing fruit in the province.
“We have power-saving programs that people can apply in to, for businesses for example, to try to increase energy efficiency. We’ve estimated that since 2008, our customers have saved close to 150 megawatts of power,” Cherry said. “Residential customers alone – just by switching to energy-efficient lightbulbs, LEDs most commonly – have saved much as 70 megawatts of power over that period. That’s equivalent on its own to powering 18,000 homes for a year.”
