THOMASVILLE — Thomas-ville Utilities is offering its electric customers with higher demand and consumption rates an incentive to save energy.

“The city developed a rate that provides incentive to our larger customers to use energy more efficiently,” Lynn Williams, assistant city manager of customer service, said. “Those who distribute their consumption over time and who control their demand are rewarded with a lower cost per kilowatt-hour.”

The city looked at its large capacity customers and determined to use 2,500 kilowatts usage or higher and a load factor of 70 percent or greater as the incentive rate.

There are three industrial classes, all based on demand: 50 KW or less (small), 50-500 KW (medium) and 500 KW or greater (large).

“The city has to pay for capacity,” Williams said. “If you set a demand of 100 KW and the rest of the day you only use 20 KW we have to pay 100 KW capacity to make sure the customer has enough energy. It drives up our costs.”

Total cost will vary because all customers have different capacity and consumption figures, officials said.

“How they use their energy is consumption and that is based on energy use over time in kilowatt hours,” Don Atkinson, assistant city manager of utilities said.

The incentive was approved by the Thomasville City Council in October and should begin showing on this month’s billing cycle, officials said.

“Right now it affects about five percent of our large customers,” Atkinson said. “Any customer could qualify who has that demand and capacity rating.

“Power costs will be lower for the city and we’re passing on costs savings to the customers that achieve this efficiency.”