Oct 25, 2019   SOURCE: BusinessWire

TECO Peoples Gas Celebrates New Milestone of 400,000 Customers and Continuing to Be an Environmental and Customer Service Leader

TECO Peoples Gas, Florida’s largest natural gas utility, has reached a new milestone: We recently connected our 400,000th customer.

“We are so pleased to provide safe, affordable natural gas – and award-winning customer service – to 400,000 residential, commercial and industrial customers across Florida,” said T.J. Szelistowski, president of Peoples Gas. “This exciting milestone demonstrates that Floridians appreciate our energy solutions that provide reliable service, help local economies and benefit the environment.”

Employees at our company headquarters in Tampa as well as in the 14 division offices across Florida celebrated the milestone. We thanked customers for their loyal business by awarding prizes to randomly selected customers from each division.

Peoples Gas started in 1895 as Tampa Gas Company to provide street lights on public thoroughfares in Tampa, which was experiencing a population boom, in part due to Henry B. Plant’s railroad and the growing cigar industry. At that time, the energy for the streetlights was provided by gas manufactured from coal. Laborers dug trenches by hand, block by block, to install the gas main infrastructure to supply the gas. This delivery system would eventually grow to become today’s modern system of gas distribution throughout Florida.

Today, Peoples Gas operates more than 13,400 miles of natural gas distribution pipelines and more than 160 miles of transmission lines. We are upgrading our system by replacing legacy pipelines with new modern materials. As Florida grows, Peoples Gas is expanding to deliver clean and efficient natural gas to new customers. Peoples Gas is committed to bringing Floridians innovative and cleaner energy solutions such as renewable natural gas. In December 2017 after unanimous approval by the Florida Public Service Commission, Peoples Gas became the first utility in Florida to offer this waste-to-energy service where biogas from wastewater treatment plants, landfills or agricultural processes can be captured and cleaned to be a pipeline-quality fuel.

Recognizing Floridians’ growing desire for a cleaner energy future, communities across the state are choosing natural gas for electricity generation, leading to a positive effect on the environment. Natural gas generation units emit far fewer greenhouse gases than coal-fired units. And in Florida’s homes and businesses, Peoples Gas customers are reducing their carbon footprint while enjoying higher-efficiency natural gas appliances, such as tankless water heaters, and technologies like compressed natural gas to fuel fleet vehicles.

Peoples Gas customers continue to express their confidence and loyalty by giving the company high marks in various customer satisfaction studies. For the seventh year in a row, Peoples Gas ranked highest in customer satisfaction among midsized natural gas companies in the south region in the J.D. Power 2019 Gas Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study. Earlier in the year, the company was named the Most Trusted Utility in the nation for the fifth consecutive year in the 2019 Cogent Syndicated Utility Trusted Brand & Customer Engagement™: Residential study by Escalent. Peoples Gas also was designated an Environmental Champion for the fifth year in a row based on high scores in the Environmental Dedication index of the Cogent annual study.

Peoples Gas System, Florida’s largest natural gas distribution utility, serves 400,000 customers across Florida. Peoples Gas is a subsidiary of Emera Inc., a geographically diverse energy and services company headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.