January '23 Energy News

Jan 04, 2023


Winter Propane

January 2023.

Welcome to 2023. Please keep your legs and arms inside the ride at all times. I wish you all good health and prosperity.

Will call propane customers, please call in your propane orders when the tank gauge reads 30%. This will allow us to get to all of our customers in an efficient, timely manner. 

We’ve changed our computerized routing system and we’ve been tweaking it to maximize our delivery personnel’s efficiency. If you are on our route delivery system, please be patient. The majority of our tanks have monitors on them so that we know how much propane is in your tank. We will get to you. You may see your propane level get below 20%. Don’t be alarmed. On a 500 gallon tank, that means there are 100 gallons left. Most houses go through 5 to 7 gallons of propane per day. That means you’ve still got 10 days to 2 weeks of propane left in your tank. 

The Propane Education and Research Council is still offering incentives for the installation of propane water heaters. It can be either new construction or a replacement. The incentive amount is $300. Get in touch with your local energy office to learn more. 

If you’re interested in learning how to convert your gasoline vehicle to run on propane as well, there are some pretty hefty incentives available. Typical conversions run about $8,000 and as of the first of the year we are able to get you $5,500 in incentives. I’ve saved over $13,000 in fuel costs since converting my Ford F150 to run on propane. Another plus of this type of conversion is that if you go on a trip somewhere and don’t have access to propane, you can still run your vehicle on gasoline. If you run out of propane it automatically switches back to gasoline. The control beeps at you to let you know it happened but there is no change in performance. 

Propane supplies look pretty good this winter in the U.S. We’ve made it through one cold snap relatively unscathed but I’m sure Mother Nature has a few more tricks up her sleeve. We’ll see what that does to the U.S. propane supply.  

Are you interested in locking in your farm diesel price for 2023? One thing contracting will do for you is lock in your price so that you have a good idea of what your inputs will be. Will it save you money? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. You need to decide if that is the right decision for your operation. If you’d like to learn more about contracting your diesel, please call your local energy office or call Addison at 608.479.1357. If you’re serviced out of our Westby location, please ask for Greg Pedretti at 608.634.3184.

If you enjoy winter sports, I hope we keep a bit of snow cover and temps don’t get too crazy one way or the other. If you’re a snow bird, enjoy your time down south and we’ll see you next spring. Thank you for your business. 
 

Tim Lease

Division Manager

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We have completed our annual financial audit and I’m very pleased to report that your cooperative had another solid year in 2023. With highlights including consistent year over year growth from our feed division to lead our company in total sales to our energy team rebounding with the largest improvement to net income over the prior year, each division completed the year with strong sales and positive earnings. Premier will report our fiscal 2023 local net savings of $15 million and total revenues of just over $308 million will exceed previous records. Based on the strong 2023 results, and those of many prior years, we anticipate returning approximately $6 million in cash back to our members in the spring of 2024.