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TVA Pilot Goes to the Source to Analyze Customer Behavior By SGN Staff Feb 9, 2010 - 3:47:25 PM
This is encouraging: A small scale pilot project to study how customers respond to energy efficiency and peak demand reduction options. It could yield some good information about customer behavior and bonus points for the utility for getting customers involved.
While modest in size, a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) pilot project could tell the utility a lot about how customers would actually respond to energy efficiency and conservation and peak demand reduction measures that could become an integral part of the Smart Grid.
With the help of four distributors in TVA's eight-state territory, about 1,400 customers will be divided into three groups. Some of the customers selected (it's voluntary) will be a control group — nothing about their electric service will change. A second group of customers will have a display hooked up to their electric meter to give them a detailed profile of their power use.
In addition to the displays, the third group will have thermostats and water heater meters that can be turned on and off by the utility as needed to lessen demand on the electric grid during peak demand.
The whole process sounds a bit like a clinical drug trial. TVA will try to figure out how to best cut customer demand and how often they can get away with it before customers balk. A TVA spokesman said the utility doesn't want to drive customers to that point, but as a practical matter would like to know roughly where that point might be.
The second group, equipped with only the displays, will give the utility an idea of far customers are willing to go to voluntarily reduce their power consumption.
TVA will reimburse customers in the second and third groups for the cost of the equipment.
In addition to providing valuable feedback about customer behavior in those scenarios, the information also could be useful if TVA decides to charge customers based on a time-of-use pricing plan. But that possibility, the spokesman said, would be several years down the road. . From the source …
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