The office of the Marquette Board of Light at Power, located at 2200 Wright St., Marquette, is pictured. Officials with the BLP are working to spread the word about the statewide energy optimization program, which provides rebates for the purchase of energy-efficient items, such as LED light bulbs and Energy Star appliances. During the program’s first 10 years, BLP customers saved over 31 million kilowatt-hours and $17 million due to installation of energy-efficient items purchased with rebates, officials said. (Journal file photo)

MARQUETTE — Marquette Board of Light and Power customers might be pleasantly surprised if they take a careful look at their bill, as the municipal electric company has refunded its customers a total of $1.3 million over the course of the last year, giving over $100,000 a month back to its customers.

For an average household using about 500 kilowatt-hours a month, about $4.50 is credited to their account on each bill under the fuel adjustment line item, BLP officials said. The exact amount of credit can be found by looking at the fuel adjustment line item on a monthly bill, which will show a dollar amount, followed by the initials “CR,” which indicates the total amount credited back to a customer on their bill.

The reason for the credits largely goes back to the retirement of the coal-fueled Shiras Steam Plant and the opening of the BLP’s new Marquette Energy Center in 2017, said BLP Executive Director Tom Carpenter and Toby Smith, the BLP’s manager of accounting and customer service.

“Due to our changes in our operating strategy, it’s really related to a pretty significant credit back to the customers,” Smith said.

The Marquette Energy Center is powered by three 8-megawatt Wartsila reciprocating internal combustion engines which are dual-fueled by natural gas and fuel oil. This allows great operational flexibility than the Shiras Steam Plant, they said, as the Shiras Steam Plant couldn’t simply be turned off if energy prices on the grid were cheaper than generating energy at the plant.

“We have the ability to operate the new MEC units really efficiently. They’re very flexible, so we can turn them on and off to follow demand, and also market conditions (and) costs,” Carpenter said. “And we’ve been doing that now for over a year. But by doing that we have seen that $1.3 million in expenses (decline) during the course of the year, and we’ve passed that directly back from customers. So by us moving away from the Shiras Steam Plant and running the new units efficiently, economically, and dispatching them against the market, we’re really saving a lot of money. It’s a wonderful thing.”

In the past, customers may have noticed the fuel adjustment line item showing up as a charge rather than a credit, as the fuel adjustment line item can end up as a credit or a charge, depending on the current operating costs for the BLP.

This is because the BLP functions as a municipal “cost of service company,” Carpenter said.

“We charge what it cost us to serve. We don’t charge any extra, we don’t charge any less,” he said. “If those costs change during the month, in this case, with fuel adjustment, we give it back.”

Furthermore, the fuel adjustment credits back to customers aren’t expected to end any time soon, he said.

“We have no reason to think that they’re not going to continue the way they are for the immediate future,” he said. “Our fuel prices, our market energy prices are all relatively stable. Now we’ve actually locked in gas for the winter that’ll keep our fuel costs for the MEC stable. The (Midcontinent Independent System Operator) market has been — if anything — flat for the last number of years. There’s no real expectation that will spike up and that’s where all these cost savings are coming from.”

Cecilia Brown can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 248. Her email address is cbrown@miningjournal.net.