As we begin our 2014 construction program, we continue to receive great interest from the community as we expand natural gas service in the valley because the positive economic impact of this project is truly once in a lifetime," said Mike Minkos, president of Summit Natural Gas of Maine.
With phase 1 complete, residential customers in Augusta, Fairfield, Gardiner, Hallowell, Randolph and Waterville are now connected to the Summit pipeline and are using natural gas. In total, more than 1,800 residential customers have already signed up with Summit for natural gas service and to benefit from the efficiency rebates available.
Commercial customers have also benefited from Summit's progress during Phase 1. In Madison, UPM Madison is now being serviced by Summit to change the energy source
for the mill's power boilers to natural
gas and reduce the company's overall energy costs. UPM Madison is a major player in the supercalendered sector of the paper industry and one of the region's largest industrial manufacturers.
To date, we have four of our major anchor customers being served, including Madison, Huhtamaki in Fairfield, Inland Hospital in Waterville, the city and school facilities in Augusta and Sappi Fine Paper in Skowhegan will become live in June.
In addition, more than 500
commercial customers have already signed contracts with Summit, including the city of Augusta, Skowhegan Savings, Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan, and Sappi Fine Paper North America in Skowhegan.
Phase 2 of the Kennebec Valley project will begin this month and focus on installing distribution lines throughout several communities and the service
lines that will connect homes and businesses with natural gas. In 2014,
Summit Natural Gas of Maine will be installing more miles of additional natural gas pipelines to residential areas than any other company in Maine.
Tim Johnston, the Executive Vice President overseeing our project in Maine, noted the extreme challenges we’ve overcome to successfully complete the first phase of the Kennebec Valley project, “despite getting a late start to construction in June of 2013 due to weather, an ongoing fierce competitor with Maine Natural Gas, having to replace our main steel contractor, extremely challenging conditions under the ground in Maine, we have made amazing progress in less than one year. I am so proud of how our teams in Maine and Colorado have performed under pressure to completely transform the energy landscape in Maine. It’s a tremendous achievement we can all be proud of.”
68 MILE PIPELINE COMPLETED
CONT FROM PAGE 1
REGULATORY
UPDATE
BY ERIN CAMPBELL
Colorado Natural Gas:
CNG manages energy efficiency programs, which are opportunities for our customers to participate and receive rebates for appliance upgrades, improve insulation, or other programs. A new program for 2014 is our hot water energy savings kits. Our customer service team has shipped 12 kits to requesting customers and that has created 18 dekatherms in energy savings helping us try to achieve our annual goal of 5,000 dekatherms. CNG offers heating cost assistance to approved customers. All CNG customers pay $0.28 on their bills and those funds are collected for our Customer Assistance Program or CAP. So far, during the 2013-2014 winter season, we have distributed almost $30,000 to over 80 customers.
Summit Natural Gas
of Missouri:
The 2014 SNGMO rate case is still ongoing. We will be holding local public hearings in June to inform our customers of our proposed changes related to this rate case and we continue to respond to data requests from Missouri Staff. We just filed our 2013 Missouri Annual Report. We are working on revisions to the MGU and SMNG Tariffs due to a new Chapter 13 rulemaking related to customer service billing.
Summit Natural Gas
of Maine:
SNGME is preparing an amendment to the tariff with regards to rebate terms and conditions to be clearer to customers and better match the other rebate programs available through Efficiency Maine. We continue to submit compliance filings in our petition to furnish service as a gas utility.