How would you like to get paid a little extra to use less electricity?
If PPL Electric Utilities is your power supplier, you can do just that. But there’s one catch: you have to give the electric company the ability to turn off your heat pump or air-conditioning unit.
Customers who enroll in the E-Power Peak Saver program will have a digital device connected to their air conditioning units or heat pumps. When energy use hits peak demand on hot summer days, the device will tell the compressor on a customer’s unit to run half the time it normally would. The units are operated remotely and receive a signal commanding the reduced consumption when demand on the grid hits a critical point.
PPL spokesman Joe Nixon says the difference in temperature is a negligible degree or two. In return, customers will be paid $8 per month. E-Power Peak Saver is available to residential customers, as well as some businesses, in PPL’s coverage area in parts of central and eastern Pennsylvania.
Nixon explains that the program is part of the company’s push to comply with a state law requiring a 4.5 percent reduction in utilities’ peak demand by June 2013. Other utilities, including the Philadelphia area’s PECO, offer similar programs.
Source: Joe Nixon, PPL Electric Utilities
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen