ST. LOUIS — AmerenUE is offering businesses an incentive to reduce their electricity use.
The St. Louis-based utility is offering rebates to certain commercial and industrial customers that agree to lower their electricity use during periods of peak usage.
Ameren officials said reducing the demand not only improves air quality, it saves the utility money by reducing the amount of time it must run expensive "peaking" plants or purchase power from other sources during periods when power prices are highest.
It also defers the need to build costly future generating plants, officials said.