Anyone seen this?

Tom Blackwell_2

Cobb EMC, north of Atlanta had an FM radio load shedding system starting in the mid 70s. Useage was voluntary and savings were promised. The utility promised to never shed more than one 15 minute interval per hour, but got greedy in the early 80s-I remember one period of 3 and 4 "hits" per hour. Times have changed and the current rate structure is set up for real time pricing for wholesale power, so the system was abandoned. Peachtree City, south of Atlanta had an experimental time of day metering system for some time, but it was never expanded. I believe the time of day metering system has the most chance of success, because the user must decide whether to use high priced or lower priced power.

Mark Hunt_3

A friend sent me the link


Thermostats

Mark H

Bill W@Honeywell

This is a twist on a program that we have had...

available thru the utilities here in NJ for years. A special thermostat has a "chip" in it that can activate a "black box" that shuts down the compressor of your AC unit when it gets a signal from the utility. It's totally voluntary, you can opt for the program and save about $50.00/year on your electric bill. The technology exists, and has been around for at least 10 years. The utilities here use it to shed peak loads during the summer, and as far as I know government isn't involved.(yet) California has had serious power supply problems in the past, and will continue to because they, like much of the rest of the country, have aging, overloaded power generation facilities coupled to obsolescent power grids that just cannot handle such demand. Now that the mortgage crisis has slowed the rampant overbuilding in California, maybe the system can be fixed.