Austin Utilities (AU) and Owatonna Public Utilities (OPU) will be among the first in the nation to utilize a groundbreaking new program that helps homeowners save energy and money by better understanding their energy use.

The utilities are working with Virginia-based energy-monitoring service Positive Energy to deliver the Conserve and Save Home Energy Report to homeowners.

This report compares homeowners’ energy use to that of their neighbors in the community so they better understand how efficiently they are using energy.

“The average customer has no idea whether he or she uses more or less energy than the next guy,” said Kelly Lady, AU energy services consultant. “The Conserve and Save Home Energy Report gives customers an idea of how their energy use compares to similar households in the community and whether they can benefit from taking measures to conserve energy.”

The program is funded in part by a state grant awarded to AU and OPU earlier this year.

The goal of the program is to drive down energy consumption for AU and OPU customers by 2 to 5 percent over the initial two-year pilot period and helps the municipal utilities meet state-mandated gas and electric savings goals, according to Lady’s explanation.

The first reports are scheduled to appear in mailboxes in March. In the reports, AU and OPU will ascertain each customer’s most similar neighbors using a variety of criteria including type of house, square footage, period of energy use and proximity, and then plot the efficiency on easy-to-read graphs.

Showing customers how well they use energy compared to how the nearest similar neighbors use theirs gives new insight into energy conservation, and it just might drum up a little “friendly competition.”

According to Positive Energy, the neighbor-to-neighbor comparison has proven to be the single most effective piece of information to motivate homeowners to think about how they use energy. “We want homeowners to take simple steps such as routinely shutting off lights, powering down a home computer or completely filling a dishwasher before it is run,” said Roger Warehime, OPU manager of energy management and external relations. “We hope this program gets people to set goals and make progress toward changing the way they think about energy use.”

“It doesn’t cost a dime to change the way you use energy, but it can provide significant cost savings in the long run,” he said.

Last June, AU and OPU applied for and received a grant from the Minnesota Office of Energy Security to offset some of the cost of the program. It is done, in part, to comply with the Next Generation Energy Act of 2007, which makes it mandatory for utilities in Minnesota to show a 1.5 percent drop in energy consumption, according to Lady.

The reports will be mailed separately from customers’ actual energy bills, arriving typically 10 days to two weeks after the monthly bill.

Single-family homeowners with at least three months of energy history will receive a report every other month.

For more information on the Conserve and Save Home Energy Report, homeowners in Austin and Owatonna should visit www.austin utilities.com or www. owatonnautilities.com or contact the utilities by phone.