Energy Home Improvements Part 9: Enroll in a “Cycling” program.

This is part 9 on ways to take steps to make you home more energy efficient. You can go to the previous entry Part 8 or go to the next entry Part 10 here.

This recommendation is going to be late for this year as the summer months are almost over but would be ideal for most people come next spring. A lot of utility companies offer programs to upgrade your thermostat if needed and then to enroll you in a program to cycle it of your choosing. From my electricity provider provides a credit between $40 and $80 a year. The basic premise of these programs is that during peak energy consumption they will cycle select air conditioning systems off for a period of time. This helps the utilities in many ways, they reduce the overall burden of the system. They also do not need to start up dirty temporary generators for a short time.

From my utility they have plans for 50%, 75% and 100% and that seems to be typical for most of the programs I have seen. During the very hot days in the summer when electricity demand is at a maximum they will cycle your AC and many other customers to reduce the load. This prevents rolling blackouts, etc. This usually works best for people who are not home during the day but are at work. I probably wouldn’t recommend these plans to the elderly or people with young newborns who stay home all day. The rationale is that while you are not home they can reduce your energy consumption for a time. In my 2+ years using this system I think only 1 time did me or my wife get home from work and the AC wasn’t on and by 6:00 PM it was back up and running. This typically works out because it is hottest around 1 - 4PM, but also a lot of companies operating large machinery are also consuming power at that time. Once these facilities shut down for the day or go to a smaller second shift overall energy consumption goes down.

If your utility offers such a program I strongly urge you to look into it and enroll in the right plan for you.