For years Utilities have been required to make attempts to conserve on energy by doing requested energy audits. They have offered free conversions to gas boilers from oil boilers. They offer to install thermostats for air conditioning that they can set back over the Internet to reduce the load on the grid. We will cover this subject in great depth.
I received a note with my bill some years ago with regard to the value and benefits of changing my boiler to natural gas from the oil that I had used for many years. From an air pollution standpoint and the removal of the old oil tank at its risk of devaluing the property, I thought this is a good thing. So I went further.
The additional cost for gas piping was expected. The new boiler was delivered and installed. I later removed the oil tank. The men seemed very professional. I was happy with the more reliable service from the gas boiler. I began trying to see if I was saving any money on the switch. I found that I was not. I then decided to see what I could do to change that., My first notion was to do a boiler sizing survey to see if the boiler put in was a good size. After the analysis I found I needed a 180,000 BTU boiler. The one installed was a 300,000 BTU boiler. So much for due diligence on the part of the gas company and its contractor.
Let's take a look at the electric side. Many incentives have been induced to save energy for the utilities. Most of these are used to reduce peak load periods. The savings here are sold to the public as money saving as the electric rates are highest at the peak times. Anything that looks like a shift or reduction from peak rates is good. If you look at it from a utility point of view, this is great. As society has more electric use from appliances and comfort equipment, the wires are being used to capacity. With the normal peaks and vallies in the use pattern the wires are being stressed to the brown out point. This is bad. So the utility wants to flatten the use curve to avoid brown outs from the old wires, avoid having to put up new wires to your house and neighborhood, and make more money by delivering a higher average number of billable watts. We are not really saving energy. We are just spreading the use out so the wires can deliver more electricity with less power outage.
