Saving power
New York Times Straits Times 12 Jan 08;
Households embrace chance to adjust electricity use and cut bills
NEW YORK - GIVING people the means to closely monitor and adjust their electricity use lowers their monthly bills and could significantly reduce the need to build new power plants, a new study has found.
The study results, released on Wednesday, suggest that if households have digital tools to set temperature and price preferences, the peak loads on utility grids could be trimmed by up to 15 per cent a year.
This could save US$70 billion (S$102 billion) in spending on power plants and infrastructure over a period of 20 years, the study concludes. It would also avoid the need to build the equivalent of 30 large coal-fired plants, say scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the US Energy Department, which conducted the demonstration project.
The project was as much a test of consumer behaviour as it was of new technology.
Scientists wanted to determine if the ability to monitor consumption constantly would cause people to save energy.
In the Olympic Peninsula, west of Seattle, 112 homes were equipped with digital thermostats, and computer controllers were attached to water heaters and clothes dryers. These controls were connected to the Internet.
The home owners could go to a website to set their ideal home temperature and adjust it as per requirement. This also indicated their level of tolerance for fluctuating electricity prices.
They soon became active participants in managing the load on the utility grid and their own bills.
'I was astounded at times at the customer response,' said Mr Robert Pratt, the programme director for the project. 'It shows that if you give people simple tools and an incentive, they will do this.'
On the website, they were presented with graphic icons to set and adjust.
'We gave them a knob,' Mr Pratt said. 'If you don't like it, change the knob.'
The knobs' software and analytics were designed by IBM Research and functioned very much like a stock market. Every five minutes, the households and local utilities were buying and selling electricity, with prices constantly fluctuating by tiny amounts as supply and demand on the grid changed.
'Your thermostat and your water heater are day-trading for you,' said Mr Ron Ambrosio, a researcher at the Watson Research Centre of IBM.
The households in the demonstration project on average saved 10 per cent on their monthly utility bills. Mr Jerry Brous, a retiree who owns a three-bedroom house in Sequim, Washington, saved about 15 per cent, which added up to US$135 over a year.
Mr Brous, 67, said he and his wife would allow the household temperature to go 12 deg C above or below the target as the outside temperature changed.
The project was done with an eye towards guiding policy on energy-saving programmes. But how quickly the federal laboratory's project could be developed across the country remains uncertain.
NEW YORK TIMES
