Your electric utility may want to control your thermostat for you

For those of us in Eastern Washington, this kind of scenario regarding the thermostat in our house is not even believable. Imagine giving your electric utility control of your thermostat so they can adjust the temperature in your house, not you. But the reason is to keep their electric rates cheaper and your electric bill lower. 

According to seattletimes.com,
‘Within the broader risk of an energy shortage, there’s another more nuanced story. Both the supply and demand of electricity are getting spikier — the peaks and valleys of usage and generation spreading further apart — and that could upend the economics of delivering power. Utilities, facing pressure over rising rates and affordability concerns, are asking customers to help them manage the costs of increasingly expensive spikes by using less at certain times. 

Those of us who live in Chelan, Douglas, and Grant counties, for the most part, experience far lower electricity rates than Western Washington. We're probably still several years away from our power utilities, asking us to be mindful of “peak power demands” and giving them control of our thermostats at home. 

Western Washington is a different story. 

Peak power demands can drive up the cost of electricity dramatically. For example, on Martin Luther King Junior Day, 2024 there was a tremendous cold snap, causing power consumption to spike from millions of homes across the pacific northwest all turning their heat up at the same time. The utilities did not have the spare power on hand and had to buy extra power from Canada and the southwest United States, causing the price of power to spike at the utility level, and yes, they passed it on to us. 

The cost to our utilities at the time spiked up almost 10 times higher than normal. This used to be a rare occurrence, but not anymore. Now, utilities on the west side of the mountains are even more worried with server farms, data centers, and electric vehicles all coming online. 

Seattle city light has plans to try and decrease their peak power consumption by 2.5%, that's about 50 megawatts during peak demand, if they're successful in making this happen, it could save the utility about $500,000 an hour during peak power consumption. 

In the future.

University of Washington Energy expert Daniel Kirschen says that “demand response programs can both reduce the power utilities have to buy and lower wholesale electricity prices overall, somewhat dramatically”. 

I have no problem trying to conserve energy use by making sure that everything is insulated properly, improving windows and doors, and turning the thermostat down at night when I go to bed.  

I don't know if I'm ready to give up control of my thermostat to the PUD just yet.