Luke Burbank is a power pig

At Luke Burbank’s house, the lights are always on even when he’s not home. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise Seattle City Light has sent him a “scarlet lettter” of sorts for being a power pig.

“I got a letter from Seattle City Light. Usually the way that I know it’s time to open a letter from the city is the envelope is yellow because they change the color of the envelope depending on how delinquent you are.”

The letter included a little graph comparing Luke’s energy use with 100 of his neighbors. It’s not pretty. He’s using about double the average, ranking him 87 out of 100.

Is the competition enough to guilt him into changing his ways?

“It’s like when you want a little kid to do something for you…’hey, can you go get me a soda?’ And they say ‘I don’t want to’ and you say ‘I’ll time you’ and they’re like ‘okay’,” he says.

Luke and co-host Dave Ross traced the heavy power use to the ever glowing string of globe lights in his back yard that make it look like an Italian wedding.

“They’ve been on for about six months day and night 24 hours a day. Bad idea? There’s a hundred of them.”

“Holy cow, I’m working with the man responsible for global warming right here in the studio. You’re the reason it hasn’t rained for 60 days,” joked Dave.

Luke says he leaves the lights on because they’re beautiful and to deter would-be criminals. While he figures he’d just as soon rank 100 as long as he’s already among the worst, he admits the letter did spark at least a bit of guilt this morning.

“I took a moment and I unplugged those friggin’ outdoor lights.”