As frigid temperatures sweep across the Southeast, Piedmont Natural Gas is providing customers with tips and resources to help them manage their home energy use and save money on their energy bills. According to Sasha Weintraub, senior vice president and president of Piedmont Natural Gas, even with the downward trend in the cost of natural gas, some customers may still struggle with paying their monthly bills or be looking for opportunities to keep their expenses down.
To help customers manage their energy use during colder temperatures, Piedmont Natural Gas offers several low- to no-cost energy-saving tips and projects. These include setting the thermostat to the lowest comfortable setting, leaving drapes or blinds open during sunny winter days, changing air filters regularly, managing water heating temperature, sealing air ducts, sealing the home, considering insulation, and leveling out bills with the Equal Payment Plan (EPP) program.
The EPP program allows customers to pay a predictable, equal monthly amount to help avoid billing surprises. Piedmont determines this payment by adding up a customer’s annual natural gas usage and then dividing it into the same payment amount each month.
Piedmont Natural Gas also provides a variety of energy-saving tools to help customers identify ways to save money and energy throughout the year. These programs and tools help customers understand what factors are impacting their natural gas bills and emphasize specific actions they can take to prepare and reduce the impacts of high winter usage.
For customers in need of financial assistance, Piedmont Natural Gas offers the Share the Warmth program, which provides funds to local agencies to assist families with their utility bills. Additionally, the Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIEAP) provides winter heating assistance to eligible customers.
Sasha Weintraub emphasizes that anyone in need should apply for these programs to see if they qualify. The company is committed to being a resource for customers and helping them lower their natural gas bills and offering payment assistance programs.
Piedmont Natural Gas, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, distributes natural gas to over 1.1 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The company has been named the No. 1 utility in customer satisfaction with residential natural gas service in the South for the second year in a row. Duke Energy, the parent company, is executing an aggressive clean energy transition and has goals of achieving net-zero methane emissions from its natural gas business by 2030 and net-zero carbon emissions from electricity generation by 2050.
For more information on energy-saving tips, financial assistance programs, and energy-saving tools, customers can visit the Piedmont Natural Gas website.
