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Has Achieved Nirvana |
"Time of Use" metering helps cut demand at peak times very effectively. It was just being introduced in CA when I left and I understand parts of Colorado have had it for a long time. Might be something for Texas to consider.
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Has Achieved Nirvana |
Com Ed has had a bunch of plans to reward people who shift use to off-peak hours. Maybe twenty years ago, they had an optional device that was installed on your A/C that would allow them shut off the A/C during peak demand hours. Don't remember the details, but you got a credit for having the device, and there were limits on how long it was shut off for and how many times a month they could shut it off. They also offer Time-of-Day/Time of Use pricing if you request it. We're enrolled in Peak Time Savings . If demand is projected to be high, they will reach out in the morning and notify us that we could get a credit if we reduce our use during a time period that day. The credit based on how much below your average usage you reduce that day's usage. It's pretty cool, and totally under your control. They also have Hourly Pricing . Not sure how that works.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Looks like ConEd will come out and replace your meter if you want to go to hourly pricing. SoCaEd went through and changed every meter on the system with new electronic remote-read meters that can report power consumption on a minute by minute basis. They can also now start and terminate of service remotely - no more meter readers, no more techs coming to the house to start service. Upside is that you can go on line and see your electricity usage, moment by moment, for the last several years. Downside is that usage at peak times is very expensive - exactly when you want to run your air conditioner. I got around that by turning off the central unit and running a small window unit in my office during peak times. I had the "air conditioner cycling" arrangement and that worked out as well - I mostly had the unit shut off when they cycled it. I've never had an electric car but if I did I would have certainly charged it at night. I don't see programs like that coming here because power is so cheap. Downside of that is that 90% comes from coal - two legacy plants in West Virginia.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
How often do they reset what they consider "average usage"? If you cut your average usage in July is that your new average for August?
If it works like it does in Texas - and here if you sign up for it - I'd avoid it. If the POWCO runs out of generating capacity and has to start buying on the (very expensive) spot market they pass the additional cost directly to you. This is how some Texas households ran up $10K power bills in a few weeks' time when everything froze up. Griddy
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Com Ed has been upgrading things around here for a while. We have a smart meter and they've installed stuff on the poles that does a great job of routing around a local outage. Every so often our power will go off for 5 or 10 seconds and then will go back on. Inevitably we discover that a branch has fallen on a line a block or two away and the smart grid has localized the outage to that immediate area. Used to be the cutouts would pop and have to be reset manually. Now there are smart cutouts that reset themselves if they determine that it is safe to do so. Mr wtg used to work for S&C Electric, a company that provides a lot of equipment to electric utilities.
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Beatification Candidate |
That's interesting to know. S&C supplied equipment, particularly circuit switchers and metal-enclosed switchgear that was used on a variety of industrial projects that I worked on. Big Al
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Mr wtg was a Production Control supervisor for switches (one of several gigs he had within the company over his 39 year career - S&C was his first and last job).
Yes, the famous green boxes. Funny story... S&C was founded by Edmund Schweitzer and Nicholas Conrad. John Conrad, Nicholas' son, was the president (and later chairman) for much of the time that my hubby worked there. John was a bit of a perfectionist and took great pride in S&C gear performing well *and* looking its best. Heaven forbid he should spot a rusting metal-enclosed gear box in the field. He would note the location and, when he got back to the office would instruct someone to deal with it. It's been ten years since Mr wtg retired, but we still chuckle whenever we see MEG when we're out driving around. Those boxes are everywhere.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
John Conrad obit. https://eepower.com/news/sc-el...-conrad-passes-away/
An article about the company going ESOP after Conrad's death. https://www.forbes.com/sites/m...acy/?sh=55c8fc3029d7 A remarkable company in many ways.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
A once Big Al is ready to travel I think Mr. WTG, Al and I should spend a long afternoon reliving our respective careers. I never got involved in the generation/ distribution side of the business but it fascinates me. I have so many questions!
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
And back to how to save money...this LifeHacker article popped up in Pocket today. I'm not sure what to make of the idea...it's sort of a version of Steve's "charge your electric car overnight" concept.
https://lifehacker.com/how-to-...source=pocket-newtab Steve? Al? Bueller?
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| knitterati Beatification Candidate  |
Our 101 year old house isn’t well insulated. But we’re having a pretty good time opening all the windows in the morning, and closing them when the inside/outside temps are the same, then letting the a/c run. Upstairs windows are open overnight; I don’t leave downstairs open overnight. No surprise visitors!
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| Beatification Candidate |
The supercooling idea has some merit, particularly if there is a time of day factor in your electric utility billing. Doing anything you can when the power is cheaper may save you money. Charging your electric vehicle at night would clearly make sense because you're filling your battery with kilowatts that cost less then. Supercooling the house is more complex because of all the factors such as thermal mass, sun exposure, insulation, weather, and so on that go into the energy budget of a home. Some of these factors also impinge on winter heating costs, but unless you're using a heat pump or something similar, time of day pricing doesn't apply to the primary fuel costs anywhere that I know. It's worth looking at some of the comments on the article that WTG posted to see what some other people think of the idea, including a few who have tried it or something similar, My best advice would be to try it and see. Just be sure that you compare apples to apples. Look at factors like average day time/night time temperatures, power consumption (kWh)during different times of day or different rate periods, and electricity rates during those periods. If you are on a fully variable rate like some of those Texans, it will get hard to sort out what you're paying over any extended stretch of time. This topic reminded me of ice storage, a scheme to reduce cooling costs for large complexes like office parks or malls. The idea was to make ice when power costs were low and temperatures were favorable for that activity and then to use the ice to cool the air during hot seasons, usually as part of the chilled water circulation in the HVAC system. I'm not sure how the economics worked out for the systems that got installed because I haven't encountered such a system in recent years. Geothermal heat pumps have made greater inroads in some markets where the heat being extracted from the building is dumped into the ground or into groundwater wells. A number of years ago, Ohio Power, the utility that served my parents' house had program to install very large water heater with lots of thermal mass and good insulation in participating customers' homes. The water heaters operated on a time-of-day signal over the electric line and normally only heated water during the night, the objective being to have sufficient hot water stored to serve the needs of the house until the next night. That program disappeared after awhile so I suppose it didn't live up to expectations. One load balancing activity that started before the water heaters and still goes on in some places is fixed-price outdoor lighting where the utility would install a photocell-controlled light on a pole near your house or barn that was paid for at a fixed monthly rate. Obviously, such lights only require electricity at night. Most utility tariffs in Pennsylvania have some such rate structure for street lighting based on the type and number of street lights being served. It's not very practical to meter the power to individual street lights so this makes a good bit of sense, Big Al
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| (self-titled) semi-posting lurker Minor Deity  |
This is the first I've heard of supercooling. I don't know that our house is a good candidate as-is, but maybe if we got new attic insulation and windows. In the meantime, I think it maybe makes sense to just keep the house at a constant temp. We don't open the windows at any point basically from June until late Sept. so maybe that helps??
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
One of the Memorex plants I worked in had an ice banking system. It ran on brine and it worked very well. A Johnson & Johnson plant I worked on later also had an ice bank under one of the buildings that looked like an Olympic swimming pool. That one had a lot of problems - expansion and contraction would crack the copper lines in the pool and let all of the Freon escape. I suspect they abandoned it, or at least converted it to brine. As a side note, as soon as I read about all of the problems they were having with the outdoor skating rink in NYC (Rockefeller Center?) - the one that TFG takes credit for fixing - I knew exactly what was wrong. TFG’s guy converted it to brine and it’s been running ever since.
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| Has Achieved Nirvana |
Al has it covered, but I’ll add one thing. The article says to pre-cool the house to 60 degrees. This is a terrible idea and will likely damage the compressor. Residential air conditioners aren’t made to operate below about 66.
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