The Uninformed and Out of Control Energy Consumer
We need better and simpler information technology for better decisions.
It’s the time of the year when I start yelling at the family to not set the thermostat to 67 degrees because electricity costs a lot of money and we don’t have a money tree. It immediately follows the season when I tell my family not to set the thermostat to 72 degrees, because natural gas costs a lot of money and even if we had a money tree, it would probably not bear fruit in the winter. As we have pointed out many times on this blog, the energy you pay for is not something you experience directly, but you experience the services it provides. And most of us have absolutely no, nada, keine idea how much energy a fridge versus a lightbulb, toaster oven, water heater, EV charger, wine fridge, iphone charger, big screen TV uses or how much it costs to operate for a certain amount of time.
Ten years (gulp!) ago, I talked about the fabulous paper by Jessoe and Rapson, that pointed out that if you price energy right and give people information about how much they use, they do the right thing! And the impacts are persistent and large! I had high hopes that years in the future, everyone would have easy access to a cheap (or even free) display in their home that shows you how much energy your house uses. But the state of affairs is infuriating. I am going to briefly talk about my own experience, which is of course different from that of other folks.
My utility (PG&E) installed a smart meter outside my house over ten years ago. There are two ways of getting real time information. Send my teenager out to the meter and have him read it and yell back to me what happens when I turn stuff on or off. That deeply upsets my kid and I can’t do that all the time, since he will ask to no longer do the dishes or take the trash out. The second way is to “empower yourself” with a program called stream my data. You have to go through forms, prove that you are worthy, invest $100 bucks in a small box that you have to hook up to your router and then go through a complex app setup to read your data. It works. I did it. Then after 5 years I learned that the white box I had was no longer working and I was invited to buy a new model. When this thingy works, my real time data can be looked at in an app on my phone, which requires glasses, which I can’t ever seem to find. Other than that you are out of luck. (Yes there are some apps, but none of them work without jumping through serious hoops).
Information about natural gas consumption is even worse! I would have to send my kid to the backyard with a stopwatch to figure out how much gas is flowing through our pipes to run our furnace and water heater (Yes. We do not have a heat pump yet. Spare me the comments.)
And all of this is happening to a nerd, who is not afraid of coding things, installing things and is pretty handy all around! I am going out on a limb here to say that the typical consumer will not go through this effort and will continue to make largely uninformed decisions based on their consumption from two months ago appearing in the bill when the autopay hits their account. This is not as bad as my dad’s home in Germany, which gets a single energy bill each year (I am not kidding), but not much better.
So here is what I am thinking. When the car was invented, it did not even have a speedometer. You drove by felt speed. That is both an issue for safety and energy consumption of course, as energy consumption for vehicles increases non-linearly in speed. So today, all cars have a speedometer, which helps us make better decisions. But let’s link that up with energy consumption. The US total energy consumption per capita for the residential sector is 61.9 million BTU. For transportation (trucks and cars) it is 73.5 million BTU. Each car and truck we build or import now has real time energy speed and consumption feedback and most cars have an “eco(n) mode”, where the car prioritizes fuel economy (e.g. shutting down cylinders or not unleashing as much power when you step on the gas pedal), which is good for the environment and the pocket book.
If you are an eager consumer you can get yesterday’s total consumption for your home or jump through Auffhammerian hoops to get real time feedback for electricity. But the next step is still missing. The “eco mode” button on my house today is not that different from the one my dad used in the 1960. It’s essentially programming my thermostat. Yes there are some startups that do smart things here, but all of them require learning and signing things, which frankly most folks won’t do.
So here is what I want.
- I want everyone to have a display in their house with real-time electricity and natural gas consumption. They should not have to go out and buy it, as it’s probably going to save more energy than the cost of the gadget (especially if a government agency or utility buys 10 million).
- I want the main electricity consuming gadgets in my house to be controlled in a fashion that if I want to hit eco mode, the whole house sets itself up in energy saving mode. One button. Like in a car.
- I want the utility to be able to control major electricity uses in my house during times of energy scarcity and downcycle my fridge, turn the AC up a few degrees, defer my car charging and delay my laundry machine. I want to get a notification when the utility is going to do this.
- I want to be able to control or override all of this on my phone (for example, say no – thank you. I have a bunch of people coming over.).
I have friends, I am not going to name them (David Anthoff), who are so nerdy that they are spending time hacking their homes to do just this, with bizarre sensors and code that lives on github. He will probably tell me to stop whining and just do what he does. But I should not have to. If we are going off into an electrify everything future, these information-based technologies need to be simple and everywhere.
Keep up with Energy Institute blogs, research, and events on Twitter @energyathaas. Suggested citation: Auffhammer, Maximilian. “The Uninformed and Out of Control Energy Consumer” Energy Institute Blog, UC Berkeley, May 30, 2023, https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2023/05/30/the-uninformed-and-out-of-control-energy-consumer/Categories
Maximilian Auffhammer View All
Maximilian Auffhammer is the George Pardee Professor of International Sustainable Development at the University of California Berkeley. His fields of expertise are environmental and energy economics, with a specific focus on the impacts and regulation of climate change and air pollution.
Energy Institute Blog 
The “group think” fundamental error for the last 40 years in assuming residential energy consumers will change their consumption of energy for heating, cooling, washing and lighting through greater access to real time prices and costs, is the assumption that such energy demand is immune from inelasticity of. consumer demand, particularly when the savings are a very small part of overall disposable income as well as relatively small compared to the savings from other changes in consumption eg delaying buying a new car, new TV, new home, or expensive vacation. This is not to belittle those sophisticated consumers who want to save an additional $20 a month by buying a smart thermostat instead of remembering to turn the A/C down manually during a heat wave – but the great majority of consumers are pretty inelastic about their heating, cooling, cooking and lighting needs, compared to the potential savings on their energy bills each month and compared to the easier and greater savings through other discretionary spending changes that are not as uncomfortable…..and of course the other fallacy about residential energy consumer behavior is that that those consumers respond to marginal prices, when study after study shows they respond more to changes in their monthly bills, not the unit prices that make up the monthly bills…
There are MANY who do not care what the cost/ charge is — like the ones who have to rush to appointments because they didn’t plan > and get speeding tickets, or get into scrapes on the side of the garage. There are quite a few ‘watt meters’ that you can install on the high-wattage appliances and get info to guide your energy management. For most homes how viable it will be likely depends on number and ages of residents./ I have a hard enough time with just another.
Hi Maximilian,
Thanks for your research and publishing work. We had some of the same monitoring concerns as you, running outside, waiting for the meter to display net usage. Such challenges with net zero with solar system, charging our all electric car, wondering what watts the refrigerator or stereo system or computer system or new heat pump takes.
We wanted to share that a company named Emporia offer many products that we love. We use the real time monitor that connects to our PGE smart meter, iPhone app or desktop app for real time usage charts, and we also have some of the monitor outlet switches.
I am looking forward to migrating my car charger to a future charger they are developing that does Vehicle to Grid and automatically regulates the car charging current based on solar generation.
check it out. http://www.emporia.com
Thanks again for your research,
Rod
Hi Rod, I looked into the Emporia and it seems to be a reasonable device, except that it is cloud based. This is a privacy issue and, if the company goes out of business, one or two things happen. Your data is sold and the privacy policy may or may not be respected. Also, the cloud servers may be turned off which will render the device useless.
Universal-Devices may still sell their meter reader, which at the time I bought mine, was not cloud based.
OSD
I completely agree with your recommendations. I am one of only two people I know who know what electrical energy we use in the home, and how this compares to natural gas or propane. (One therm of natural gas is 29 kwh, one gallon of propane is 27 kwh, one gallon of gasoline is 34 kwh and one gallon of heating oil is 40 kwh.) I have numerous watt meters in the house that I use to determine how much it costs to run various appliances. I had a teenager in an isolated room heated with a stand alone electric radiator. As soon as put a watt meter on the radiator he started shutting off the radiator when he was gone, even though I told him I didn’t mean to charge him for energy use, just wanted to know what it was costing! I have considered getting wifi capable watt meters that I can read automatically on my home computer, but apparently they can be hacked so have not done so. Interestingly, charging our 2011 Nissan Leaf with a 120v system I measured 2.8 miles/khw of input electricity when the car reported it was getting 3.8 miles/kwh. If this correct it means there is a striking loss of electricity just charging this car.
In addition to your recommendations, I would like an electrical bill where I can calculate the payback of our solar panels. We appear to charge only about $0.08/kwh for the renewable electricity, but the final price is about $0.30 to $0.040 per kwh, a huge cost for delivery. We then get credit back, electrical car credit, and numerous other charges and refunds. It is simply not possible for me to understand my electrical bill. I want to know what we actually pay for electricity delivered, and what the payback is likely to be for our solar panels. So increased clarity on billing will also help. Highly desirable would be an estimate of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions on our bill. Difficult to achieve, but if there is ever going to be a carbon fee and dividend this will be calculated anyway.
The data about charging your Leaf is probably correct. You are measuring two different things. The Leaf tells you how it uses power produced by the battery. The other gadget tells you how much energy is needed to charge the battery. Battery charging is not 100% efficient so the amount stored is less than you put in. Getting energy out of a battery also incurs losses. Plus, the battery is 12 years old which probably affects its efficiency.
I agree with the general tone of this article. If you make energy consumption costs visible people will use less. Most people have no idea how fast a car uses gasoline. If we had a fuel consumption gauge tied to the current cost of gasoline people would see money draining out of their wallet each time they hit the accelerator going uphill on the freeway. Just seeing that happen would make most of us slow down.
From one Max to another, let me suggest that while YOU want all of these things, the vast majority of people (especially the ones not reading any of this) do not.
Most people just want systems that work and do the right thing without them having to pay attention. They don’t want to have to continually look at dashboards, meters, lights etc. We want to emphasize structural efficiency to get the most population bang for the buck. People might be willing freeze (in our case melt) in the dark for an emergency, but they want energy services most of the time without having to think about it.
I totally agree Peter. I worked in energy efficiency for most of my career and can agree 100% that people want to be comfortable in their homes (not hot or cold), they want to bathe or shower in comfortable temperatures, and they want their houses to look nice with good appliances. That’s what energy efficiency people are going against. To be honest, I want those things too and find 67 degrees to be unbearable.
Agreed.
Yeah, and if you have teenagers and/or a large family and/or family members who are temperature sensitive or tend to do things (like laundry) at the last minute, or whose schedule changes a lot or you live in a place where you have no idea what the next few days’ temperature is going to be (like much of the Bay Area) making your thermostat hard to program, you will just spend more time (at best) freaking out about the numbers and/or (at worst) yelling at your family.
And if my local utility succeeds in getting a massive fixed charge and a much lower volumetric charge, my bill impact of inefficient use (at least of electricity) won’t be such a big deal. (That kind of rate design did reduce how much I yelled at my teenager for their water use…)
I can’t help but think that all the things you want from energy control technology, or almost all, could be met by AI. Good luck with that override button!
Nicely stated little connivences to help us PG&E consumers to save money and use less electricity. Unfortunately, our meters are “outsmart meters” that only keep people from installing solar panels without getting slammed onto NEM 3.0 and the utility reaping all the reward from consumers wanting to do the right thing and power their homes from the Sun. Utilities are in it for the money and only regulators, like the California Public Utility Commision (CPUC), can dictate any reforms, yet the CPUC is also controlled by the utilities as seen by the replacement of NEM 2.0 with NEM 3.0 that takes 4 kilowatt hours away from the rooftop solar homes and returns only one kilo watt hour in return. The CPUC is not on the consumers side, in California, so consumers must find for themselves an alternative to the privately owned utilities in California.
A (largely) unspoken truth in the electric industry, is that we get paid to be taken for granted. No customer wants to wonder whether the light will go on if they flip the switch, and they get quite irate when it doesn’t! While I tend to concur in your wants, I question how widespread those sentiments are shared.
I tend to agree. While I am a professional energy geek, my family is busy and just wants to do what they want/need to do at any given time. They are fine with energy efficient appliances as long as they work well, but they generally don’t like the idea of TOU rates, for example.
Robert Cromwell and Max Sherman note that most customers desire to be oblivious sheep when it comes the their electric bill. This is probably true and the utilities love them for it. The utilities wholeheartedly embrace this fact and when they increase their profits yet again, the utilities know that only a few left-winged whack jobs will get just one minute to present an opposing view to only the PUC commissioner while utilities get the attention of everyone working for the PUC for untold hours.
It is up to the concerned and informed citizens to rectify the travesty of Californians pay more for electricity than anyone else in the nation. (Yreka pays twice that of Ashland)
OSD
I am all for this! In fact, my house is pretty much wired for it now. The next step is onto the learning curve of using this information effectively.
I do have a problem with the utility controlling my devices though. If there is one thing that is constant about the utilities is their overwhelming greed and inconsideration of any that attempts to thwart it. If they have control, they will, not “may”, but “will”, control your devices to optimize their bottom line. I, personally, am witness to this behavior, having worked for SDG&E and saw to what extent they would go.
But this is all tempest in a teapot. Doing these things will reduce energy demand, by what, 20%? There are 8 billion people on the earth, what will we do when there is 10 billion people on the earth? (Predicted population for 2050.)
OSD