Digital Tools Help Users Save Energy, Study Finds

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, according to a yearlong government study.

The results of the research project by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the Energy Department, released 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 percent a year.

Over a 20-year period, this could save $70 billion on spending for power plants and infrastructure, and avoid the need to build the equivalent of 30 large coal-fired plants, say scientists at the federal laboratory.

The demonstration project was as much a test of consumer behavior as it was of new technology. Scientists wanted to find out if the ability to monitor consumption constantly would cause people to save energy — just as studies have shown that people walk more if they wear pedometers to count their steps.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/technology/10energy.html?th&emc=th

Most bills are so convoluted, people only pay attention to the total. If they understood how their bill is broken down and how it compares to previous months and years, then people might conserve more. Making the bill readable is certainly a lot cheaper than installing digital equipment in every home.

"Using water bills to reinforce price signals: evidence from the USA

Our results indicate that a utility that spells out unit prices on the water bill can achieve the same level of conservation as others with a thirty to forty percent lower rate increase."

http://www.iwaponline.com/ws/00506/ws005060163.htm

actually read it?
I used to work in a bank and it amazed me how many people never opened their bank statements. If they don't pay that much attention to their money I doubt that they're reading their utility bills!

The more easily and immediately someone can monitor the effects of their behaviour, the more they tend to optimize the behaviour.

And, as much as I hate doing things like this, I will again point out the issue of scale that's raised by this finding. They estimate that in 20 years we could forego building the number of coal plants that the Chinese will construct in the next 3 months. Of course the Chinese will build them whether we save the energy or not, so there is still a benefit to doing things like this.

I think the major selling point for such a program would be the consumer's cost savings. The less energy each of us needs when the crunch hits, the more likely we are to survive it in decent shape. Or, more immediately, less money spent on today's electricity means more money available to cover tomorrow's higher gasoline prices...