I got the same email.
I know I signed up for the program when I moved into my new home in November, but this was the first time I heard any more about it.
My A/C is normally set to 75 during the day. I assumed "the event" would just involve the thermostat being turned off or set to a higher temp. I thought I was being smart and manually turned the temp down to 72 at around 1:00 to "pre-cool" the house a bit. I thought about it though, and didn't know if my manual setting before the event would override the event, so I set it back to normal programmed operation at about 1:50 to see what would happen.
To my surprise, at 2:00, SECO had the same idea -- they lowered my AC setpoint to 73 for an hour before then going up to 76 at 3:00. It stayed there until 6:00p. I assume the point was to reduce demand in the 3:00-6:00 timeframe.
During the event, the thermostat had a message on it saying something like "eco+ has been activated to help your electric utility manage peak demand" or something (I should have taken a pic but didn't think about it).
I did get a $50 credit to my bill shortly after signing up for the program, and will apparently get another credit ($10 winter/$20 summer) after each season that I stay enrolled. So far I'm happy to save $50 + $30/yr for them to raise my set temp one degree on occasion.
I'll say this program is leaps and bounds smarter than the similar program I had in VA. There, they wired a special box in to my A/C compressor that when activated, would just cut off power for hours.
|