Active Efficiency in Action
The best way to understand the value of Active Efficiency is to see it in action. There are many examples that demonstrate the potential of Active Efficiency. Between the economic, social, and environmental benefits, the hard work that goes into making these examples successful is something to be celebrated.
Market Enablers
Collaboration among regulators, legislators, and other decision-makers can create favorable market conditions for performance-based utility programs. With access to energy data and actionable insights, both customers and aggregators can harness these market conditions to achieve deep retrofits and improve demand flexibility. The programs and tools highlighted in this section provide examples of features that performance-based programs can adopt to stimulate market demand.
See the Performance-Based Utility Program’s Guiding Principles
Hourly Pricing Program
In 2006, the Illinois General Assembly passed legislation requiring major electric utilities in the state to offer their residential customers an hourly pricing option. This led to the 2007 launch of ComEd’s Hourly Pricing Program, which allows residential customers to benefit from lower energy prices by shifting usage to off-peak hours. Using real-time hourly pricing has saved customers $23 million and 65 million kWh since the program’s inception.
Utility Energy Efficiency Incentive Programs
U.S. cities, including Washington, DC, and states like Washington are adopting building energy performance standards. To ensure the performance targets are met, many jurisdictions are coordinating efforts to make standards-compliance and participation in utility energy efficiency incentive programs complementary toward achieving deep energy retrofits and demand flexibility.
Real-Time Energy Management (RTEM)
NYSERDA incentivizes commercial, industrial, and multi-family building customers to install Real-Time Energy Management (RTEM) systems. The systems use sensors, meters, and cloud-based technology to gather real-time data on energy performance and provide insights to participating customers on opportunities for energy improvements – such as identifying optimal times to use HVAC systems based on building occupancy.
“Carbon-Intelligent Computing Platform”
Google is testing load flexibility at its data centers using a “carbon-intelligent computing platform” to match energy loads with available carbon-free energy supply. The platform uses energy supply and demand data to inform strategic load shifting, empowering Google to consume more energy when the grid’s carbon intensity is low.