How much did we save residents in sunny California last summer? A bundle

Each year as summer temperatures rise, so do electricity bills, which is why we are excited to preview results from a new study of customers with EnergyHub-connected thermostats. During the summer of 2013, we helped Southern California residents save 6% on their summer electricity bills. Many utility executives would think that 2% whole-home savings was very impressive—we saved three times that amount!

A study of customers who installed an EnergyHub-connected thermostat between 2012 and 2013 showed an average 6% reduction in whole-home electricity use during summer months (June–September). The average monthly bill savings were $15.60 per customer. These reductions were purely from the “passive” behavioral effects of EnergyHub’s technology—i.e., increased adoption of daytime setbacks, behavior changes associated with users learning the cost impacts of their temperature preferences, and a reduction in long-term hold usage.

What’s more, the 6% savings realized did not include “active” effects of EnergyHub’s software technology, notably automatic geo-optimization through our Radius^™ service using users’ smartphones or EnergyHub’s SmartShift^™ thermodynamic optimization algorithms. We’ll be examining the energy-saving impacts of those effects in an upcoming blog post.

Other notable findings from the forthcoming study and related research include:

• There was a permanent load shift of 0.26 kW between 2 to 7pm, a critical window of grid stress for utilities, which could reduce the need for demand response events
• Electricity savings were highest in August, saving an average of 17% for customers that month
• Most of the savings came from the households with above-average electricity usage
• The average customer satisfaction level with EnergyHub’s web and mobile apps was 4.53 on a five-point scale

Interested in reading a white paper including the full results of the study? Click the button below to download it now.

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If you’re a utility professional who is curious about the impact of smart thermostats on your customers’ energy consumption, get your own one-on-one debrief of the findings, by emailing us: smartgrid@energyhub.com