Even power elite are using less

Even Seattle's well-heeled don't like to pay City Light's high electric bills. When rates went through the roof last year, some of the city's biggest users cut the lights in their mansions and waterfront homes, and reduced the amount of power they consume.

Four of City Light's top 10 residential electricity users in 2000 dropped off the list last year, according to information released by the public utility yesterday.

And even those who stayed on the list, such as Mariners co-owner Chris Larson, cut the amount of electricity they use -- in some cases, by a third.

Most of those on the list, prepared in response to a public-disclosure request from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, were unavailable for comment yesterday. But Skyway Luggage stores owner Henry Kotkins Jr., who fell out of the top 10, said the higher rates made him take a look at the amount of power he was using.

"City Light has a guy they send out to look at electrical usage and figure out what's going on. And he said we have a pretty inefficient heat pump," Kotkins said. "So we got a new system and we're using a lot less power."

Also dropping off the list were developer and arts philanthropist Bagley Wright, Bruce and Jeannie Nordstrom, and technology entrepreneur Mark Torrance.

Cellular phone billionaire Keith McCaw topped the list for the second consecutive year -- draining 532,160 kilowatt-hours of electricity. That's about 44 times what the average home uses. But it was also 12 percent less power than he used the year before.

Real estate developer Bruce Hosford used 36 percent less power and dropped from fifth place to eighth. Larson and his wife, Julia Calhoun, used 33 percent less energy, and Andrea Selig, former wife of developer Martin Selig, used 30 percent less.

But these are crazy, costly times for City Light customers. And even though the biggest energy guzzlers used less power last year, they paid a lot more.

McCaw's 2001 electric bill totaled $51,424 -- about $19,000 more than the previous year. Despite his conservation efforts, developer Hosford paid the electric company $12,934 -- $1,762 more than the year before.

Kotkins' 2001 energy bill was not released because he's no longer in the top 10. But he said his bill went up a lot last year.

"Don't get me started," he said. "I'm no fan of the third tier."

City officials last year created the third tier, in which the electric prices double after customers use a certain amount of electricity in a month (1,800 kilowatt-hours in the summer, 3,750 in winter). They hoped it would get the top energy users to conserve -- and apparently it did.

But the third tier also hit 22,000 households -- about twice as many as expected, including some low- and middle-income families. Mayor Greg Nickels has called for eliminating the rate.

"It hit way too many people than it intended to," said Nickels spokeswoman Marianne Bichsel. She said people also may have decided to conserve, because "the large amount of publicity made people acutely aware of the energy crisis."

The City Council today is expected to raise the threshold for the third tier to more than 3,000 kilowatt-hours in summer and 5,000-plus in winter. It also would lower the price from 16 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. But the council would keep the third tier for the biggest users.

Either way, the biggest energy users would pay a little less.

After getting the wake-up call last year, Kotkins said he won't start using more power.

"We live in Seattle," he said. "We're all energy-conscious. We live in a green city."