CNT’s Energy Cooperative in The New York Times
Monday’s front page of The New York Times (01/08/07) covered CNT’s Community Energy Cooperative and its role in today’s energy market. Read here about the Energy-Smart Pricing Plan and how consumers are paying for their electricity by the hour.
It’s really a natural extension in our information-driven life right now, so it makes sense that consumers should have access to their electricity prices. Instead of paying per month from an averaged-out sum of each day’s peaks and valleys, consumers have the right to know and make decisions based on real-time prices by the hour.
And now that consumers are becoming aware of this option, they are demanding it and as the Energy-Smart Pricing Plan shows, their decisions are saving them money.
This isn’t a new idea either, as The New York Times article points out. Cell phone customers wait to make phone calls when they are free on nights and weekends. Personal accountability really plays out in these situations: if you give people the right tools and information, they will make decisions to better their lives. In the real-time pricing situation, this means saving consumers money, as well as bettering the lives of others by relieving stress on the grid as a whole and, in turn, reducing air pollution.
This is an excitingly progressive reform in the energy market and will be interesting to follow in the next few months.
Read more about this topic below:
ABC 7 Chicago
“Pilot Program Gives Consumers More Control Over Electric Bill”
Fox News Chicago
“ComEd Customers Save 10%+”
Chicago Sun Times
“New Way to Cut Electric Bills Kicks in Today”
CNBC video
“Taking Control of Your Electric Bill”
January 19th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
1) All the infrastructure of your pilot was state-funded. What happens when consumers have to start paying? Are the meters and communications equipment necessary to get real time pricing more cost-effective than air conditioner cycling programs or energy efficiency investments?
2) Do consumers have the same ability to shift use to other times as cell phone users?
3) Why not promote efficiency improvements that reduce total use?
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Good questions. Here’s some more detail about our local situation. The situation here in Illinois is very different from California, especially as it relates to meters. A key thing is that real-time pricing as available here is not revenue neutral, as the California CPP pilots were. One of our main contentions is that real-time pricing does not include the risk-premium that suppliers build into a fixed price product, therefore, just by going on to real-time pricing there should be savings. Then those savings increase as people become more efficient.
In Illinois we aren’t replacing all meters like in California, instead it’s only the meters of those who choose to go on real time pricing. It’s an optional rate, not a opt-out rate like has been proposed in California. In the case of ComEd they aren’t smart meters, rather they are recording meters read once a month by traditional meter readers, so they are much cheaper. For the downstate utility Ameren, they had already decided to roll out an automatic meter reading system, for customers who choose real-time pricing, it’s just a case of doing the equivalent of a software unlock code on the those meters so that they record the hourly energy use.
In terms of cost-effective, that’s still an evolving but extremely important question. We found that on average in the pilot program people on the rate saved 10% on their bills, cut peak demand by 15-20% and became 3-4% more energy efficient (without enabling technology, all voluntary behavior change that participants said was easy to do and didn’t negatively impact their comfort). The testimony in the rate case that authorizes the new program included a model that predicted that by such levels of cutting peak demand it will lower power prices for non-participants as well as for participants and that the level of those savings exceed the cost of the program. The next 4 years will be a test to see if reality meets the expectations of the modeling. We still view this as an “experiment.” While we focused people on thinking about their peak energy use, we have always emphasized the importance of overall energy efficiency as well. This is just an additional tool in the arsenal, as we continue to support energy efficiency improvements.
We’d be happy to discuss the program more with you and get your insights on how we can improve our program. We really do think that our approach benefits participants, non-participants and the entire community.
June 15th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Anne,
10% saving and peak demand down by 15-20% I would love to see the results after 4 years hopefully they can be even better.
John