March 2019: Mindful of the Supply, Let’s Reduce Our Demand

Interested in reducing electricity costs and your carbon footprint? On March 30 at 8:30 p.m. (local time), you can become part of the worldwide Earth Hour movement by turning off electronics, appliances, and lights to reduce your electricity use for an hour. This grassroots effort to “unite people to protect the planet” will include individuals from more than 180 countries and territories, and highlights the need for a low-carbon future. After March 30, you can keep the momentum going by signing up with the Green Energy Consumers Alliance to “Shave the Peak” to help reduce the New England region’s energy costs and improve environmental quality over the long-term.

The “Shave the Peak” initiative is focused on getting people to shift or reduce their electricity consumption on those days when electricity demand on the New England electricity grid is the highest for the year. While these “peak days” occur just a few times every year, they have significant economic and environmental impacts for the region. Here’s an example of what happens to the grid on a peak day, usually on the hottest days in the summer, as described on the Alliance webpage:

“Look at Friday, August 12, 2016, which was the highest electric demand day of 2016 and one of the hottest days of the summer. On that day, temperatures soared above 95 degrees; across the region, New Englanders all cranked their air conditioners. As the afternoon wore on and people got home from work, they started cooking, turned on their TVs, or ran the laundry. Electric demand peaked at over 25,000 [megawatts] —almost twice the normal electric system load.”

To help reduce the total size of the peak, large energy users, like manufacturers, may be paid to curtail their energy use or even shut down during peak hours. But such efforts don’t always suffice. To meet the additional load on peak days, the grid must turn to so-called “peaker plants” to generate the additional electricity the region needs. Since these plants must recover their annual operating expenses during just a few days of operation per year, their associated energy costs can be very high. According to the Green Energy Consumers Alliance, electricity demand on a peak day may be twice as high as normal, but prices can be 10 times as high. The peaker plants are not only more expensive to run, but they often rely on more carbon-intensive fuels like oil to generate electricity. As a result, the region’s residents pay twice for peak events: their energy costs go up and their environmental quality goes down.

Due to the nature of these events, efforts by individuals to either reduce their electricity consumption, or even just shift the time of day they use it, has a larger impact than similar actions on other days of the year. To help individual consumers play a role in reducing the economic and environmental impact of peak events, the Alliance offers notification, through email and text, a day or two in advance of a predicted peak day, so people can plan to reduce or shift their use during the hours of highest electric use. You can sign up for the alerts on their website; the alert will come with some tips for cutting down your electricity use or shifting it to a different time of day. Some of the most basic suggestions for doing your part to “Shave the Peak” are:

• Turn down the heat or air conditioning – or better yet, turn it off.
• Avoid using large appliances in the afternoon and early evening. Wait until after 8 or 9 p.m. to run the dishwasher, turn on the laundry machine, or cook in electric ovens.
• Take a break from TV, computers, and other electronic devices for the afternoon – or charge portable devices beforehand and run them off of battery during the peak.
• Charge electric vehicles overnight.

These are all things you can strive to do all year long, not just during peak days as well as these other energy management suggestions.

If you take part in any of these initiatives, or better yet, are doing a little something every day, share it with us on Twitter – @nhdes, #shavethepeak, #Connect2Earth.

This GREENWorks article can be also be found in our document library.