Doing More than Preaching Electrical Conservation

Last week I attended the Govenor’ Energy Summit, A Roundtable on Maryland’s Energy Future. I could go into detail about the experience but will postpone that and here is an informative link.  However, at one point the audience was asked for ideas to encourage electrical energy conservation, not via intervention techniques such as BG&E’s Peak Rewards, but through other forms of encouragement and education. Time prevented most ideas from being presented to the group of several hundred attendees, but other forms of communicating such ideas were encouraged. 

Here is one.

I would suggest expanding the Time-of-Using billing practices by emulating some of advantages of the Peak Rewards programs.  The Peaks Rewards program has made conservation progress but because the conservation is ‘automatic’ in nature, it has not placed the responsibility for that conservation upon the user. A bridge between this ‘it is all done for you’ approach to 'it is a consumer responsibility' is needed. (Not that both cannot exist together.)  By implementing practices similar to the following, the consumers’ appreciation of the value and complexities of conservation will hopefully be developed.  They will learn through rewards, in a manner similar to the Peak Rewards program.  Perhaps most importantly they will develop mindsets that will more readily appreciate, and accept the implementation of  Smart Meters when they arrive in the not so distant future. They will then have a basic understanding of what those meters may achieve, having already tried to do similar conservation with less sophisticated techniques.

Therefore, I suggest:

1.     In keeping with the zero customer costs associated with Peak Rewards program, remove the monthly costs for the Time-of-Use electrical meters.  It makes no sense to bill for one device and not the others, i.e. air conditioner controllers, especially when the installation labor for the meters is a fraction of that for the air conditioning controllers. 

2.     Encourage participation in the Time-of-Use program by using the Peak Rewards practice of providing a first year ‘incentive.’  Here, one could simply provide a similar credit over a year or change the Time-of-Use billing structure for a period of time, perhaps a year.

3.     Provide some plan flexibility which may address the needs of consumers who have differing schedules, i.e. offer different “plans” as is being done with the Peaks Rewards.  Here it might be possible to swap the “off peak” weekend hours for some other period or rates. Other schedules and rates might also be considered if the technology can support it on an individualized basis.

4.     Find ways to integrate the WWW into this program.  Smart meters will depend upon Internet communications. So, begin that transition now.  If nothing else, on an easily accessible site, graphically depict the customer’s historic information and aspects of the bigger picture, perhaps system demands, local substation demands, composite peak shedding results, and generation by type, i.e. coal, gas, oil, nuclear, renewable, etc.  Show these last items in real time!  Make the customers part of this bigger picture so that they can gain some understanding of the scope of the systems and their parts in them.  Make it interesting and educational.

5.     Lastly, establish some competitive activities with rewards, perhaps dealing with decreasing consumption during certain months or billing periods.  There might be a host of different approaches to this goal. Celebrate success!  Give rewards, not only as credit but in person.  Acknowledge those who achieve established goals (whatever they are) and they will, in turn, educate others.  Get students at various ages involved.  They can learn to read a meter (I know as I have taught them) and inventory their homes or apartments.  As they say, "BRING IT HOME!"  

Now, let's see what happens.

1985