Q&A from The S. Dale High Center for Family Business

Richards Energy Group was recently joined the S. Dale High Center for Family Business at Elizabethtown College, Here is the Q&A taken from their website:   The S. Dale High Center for Family Business

During our 15th anniversary membership campaign, we added 15 new member businesses, including Richards Energy Group, an independent ‘energineering’ firm dedicated to cutting energy costs, founded in 1995 by Frank Richards and headquartered in Landisville. Richards Energy Group has been an approved electric supplier in PA since 1999 and is also licensed by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. Frank and his team kindly offered to answer our questions about Richards Energy Group:

1. What services do you provide to businesses? We help industrial & commercial customers manage electric costs, including competitive power purchasing, lighting retrofits, energy audits, demand response programs for backup generation, utility bill auditing, and cost analysis.

2. Do you have other family businesses as clients and why have they come to you? Many of our clients are family businesses. We are local, strive to do what’s best for each client, have substantial expertise and focus on service and value. So, our values are closely aligned with many other family businesses.

3. Essentially, what is your value proposition? We help clients understand and control energy costs. We invest our talents to provide optimal solutions to reduce both energy consumption and energy expenditures. We only recommend projects when the payback is good.

4. Now that PPL rate caps are gone, is it a good time to upgrade to high efficiency lighting systems? Absolutely. Efficient lighting upgrades are always a great idea, but now with the higher electric rates, the paybacks are faster. The systems we design usually cut electricity usage in half while improving light quality.

5. What is Act 129? Act 129 is a Pennsylvania law requiring electric utilities across the state to provide rebates to consumers to reduce electric consumption and demand. Everyone has to pay for it (look at the “Act 129” line on your electric bill), so you might as well take advantage of it.

6. What are the rebates for? They are incentives for reducing electric energy consumption, including heating, air conditioning, industrial processes, and our favorite, lighting.

7. Are the rebates worth the effort? We’re typically seeing the rebates cutting overall lighting job costs by a third, which really improves payback…just this year so far, our clients have qualified for over $200,000 in rebates.

8. Are the rebates still available? Yes. And for projects we install, we do all the paperwork…rebate checks generally arrive about 2 months after project completion. The programs are funded each year, but we feel most of the rebates should be available through May, 2013.

9. Are the rebates just for business? Not at all. Residential consumers can benefit with rebates for high efficiency refrigerators, de-humidifiers, heat pumps, etc. In some cases, like compact fluorescent lamps for sale in stores, you can see the rebate already included in reduced prices.

10. What is the REAP users group? REAP is a unique electric power purchasing consortium established in 1998 to take advantage of the buying clout a large group can exercise over electric suppliers. REAP is an acronym for “Richards Energy Affinity Program”.

11. How is Richards Energy Group involved? I created REAP, making it a “strong” group…clients give us the authority to sign electric power deals for them, so we can act quickly and effectively when opportunities arise in the volatile energy futures market.

12. You actually sign the Supplier Contracts? Yes, and we don’t take that lightly…we also review those contracts thoroughly, and review the bills when they start coming to be sure clients actually get the deal they were supposed to. It’s a unique approach, but it has served our clients well.

13. Does REAP work? Yes…in fact, in 2003 and 2004, REAP comprised most of the load actually shopping in all of PPL. We now actively manage 1 billion kWh of industrial/commercial accounts, and provide shopping solutions no one else can offer.

14. A final word? We like our customers and we like “win-win”. That might sound worn out, but it rings true for Richards Energy