Programming Energy Savings
In Kansas City, Mo., the power company is giving its customers the utility equivalent of a free lunch. But of course, there is really no such thing. In this case though, the catch is fairly painless for customers, good for the environment, and may wind up saving everyone money in the long run.
The program is called Energy Optimizer. To those who sign up, Kansas City Power & Light provides free, programmable Honeywell thermostats and installs them in customers’ homes and small businesses at no charge. The thermostat and associated labor are valued at approximately $300. If used as intended, programming the thermostat will save power customers between 10 and 20 percent on their electric bills.
In exchange for this windfall, customers agree to allow the company, commonly known as KCP&L, to cut back their cooling by a few degrees during peak demand times in the summer months.
The utility estimates that with several thousand participants signed up, there will be a significant decrease in the amount of electricity necessary to meet demand at its highest point. That decrease will keep the company from having to invest in new generation facilities that would go largely unused when demand is at normal levels. Because the costs of building infrastructure are passed along to utilities’ customers, deferring these kinds of investments helps keep power rates down.
By August 2006, 5,500 customers had joined the program. “By the end of the year we expect to have 12,000 thermostats in place because of the high customer acceptance we’ve experienced so far,” John Marshall, KCP&L’s senior vice president for delivery, said.
He attributes the program’s success so far to the fact that “customers want to be more involved in managing their energy costs, especially in light of some energy costs — such as gasoline — being out of control. Also, customers are interested in doing what’s best for the environment. This is a small but effective way for them to participate,” he explained.
To save energy, participants can preset temperatures for nighttime and any time that the house or business will be vacant, and then automatically go back to their comfort temperature just before they wake or return.
In addition to physically presetting the thermostat, participants can also use the Internet to program the Energy Optimizer.
The demand on KCP&L’s delivery system is highest during hot weekday afternoons from May to September. During those times, the Energy Optimizer Program enables KCP&L to send paging signals to the programmable thermostats to raise the temperature one degree every hour or to cycle the air conditioning compressor off and on in 15-minute increments. At the end of a four-hour cycle, the thermostats revert back to the original settings.
“While summer is our primary demand period, customers can use the Energy Optimizer to manage their energy all year long,” Marshall said. According to him, at least one customer has already written to the company with positive feedback on this specific feature. “She was in Korea and her plans for returning home had changed. She called up her account online and changed her thermostat setting to reflect the fact that she’d be away from home longer. So from a remote location she was able to save herself some money and conserve energy,” Marshall said.
