Did you know that Jersey Central Power & Light Co. (”JCP&L”) offers a “Residential Time of Day” service plan for its residential customers? And apparently, the program has been available for the past several years.

I will confess that I don’t read everything that comes with my electric bill, so maybe I missed the announcement. But like a lot of other JCP&L customers, I did receive and read a letter a couple of weeks back letting me know that if our electricity usage exceeded 2500 kwh in any month this summer, we’d have to pay a Basic Generation Service (BGS) Summer Peak Surcharge of 9 cents for each kwh we use over 2500 kwh per month. (This peak surcharge has since been rescinded by the BPU, at least for this summer). The idea of an excess charge kind of appealed to me, as a way to encourage people to be more energy conscious in their use and choice of appliances, and also in designing their homes. The letter did make go take a look at my bills and usage for the past year. I found that our average use has been about 1,700 kwh per month (and part of that was attributable to errant electric space heater in our third floor apartment that ran much of the winter before I figured out what had made our bill spike). And even during the summer months, when we our central AC and pool filter are running, our average monthly use barely exceeds 2500 kwh. So, I knew that with even the slightest effort, we’d be able to avoid paying this surcharge.

But I was intrigued by one of the lines in the letter, which said that for “residential Time of Day” or “RT” customers, the BGS Summer Peak Surcharge would be 18 cents in excess of 1000 kwh of peak time of day usage. Yikes!! But, after doing a little math and giving some thought to how we use electricity in the Pringle-Ellis household — and, in particular, how we could use our OmniPro II Home Automation System to help manage our electricity consumption — I realized that switching over to a Time of Day Meter could make sense for us. In fact, because off-peak rates are lower than standard RS rates, we stood to save some serious money by shifting to Time of Day metering. (According to a quick spreadsheet I put together, I caculated that if we could keep our peak/offpeak usage at 800/1700 ratio or better (hopefully, better), we stood to save more than $90 per month during the summer months versus staying with the standard same price residential (RS) service. Just to be sure, I checked our meter one morning at around 8:00 a.m. (the start of the 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. peak metering period), and then again that evening, and figured out that we used about 40 kwh that day, which for a variety of reasons was likely to represent our worst case day, assuming we kept the AC off. And I was already thinking of a few ways we could cut that figure down. In fact, since I put those measures in place, our average peak day usage (again, this is without using our CAC) has averaged between 11 and 13 kwh per day over the past several weeks.

Once we decided to go for it (and when I say “we,” I should note that Kathy asked more than once whether I was really sure this made sense), all it took was a call to the JCP&L number on the letter — 1-800-662-3115 — and within a few seconds I was talking to a service representative (who, I should note, also asked me more than once whether I was really sure this made sense). But after a few minutes of haggling, she saw it was futile to try to talk me out of it, and told me she would send someone over to replace the meter with a Time of Day meter. So, about a week or so later, I noticed that we had a brand electric meter. And not just any meter, we now had an Itron Sentinel Multimeasurement meter!

Not only did our new meter have a digital readout instead of the old-fashioned wheel and spinning dials of the typical residential electrical meter, the readout changes every few seconds, and alternately flashes the date, time of day (including seconds), and most importantly for our purposes, the amount of peak usage, and off-peak usage. By the way, one of the little things you learn when you read the fine print, is that during the summer months, peak time isn’t 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., but rather 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., due to the shift to DST. Because we will definitely want to be using the CAC by that time of the evening to cool the house down before bed time, that little wrinkle will definitely affect my calculations.

Already this weekend, I’ve changed the settings on the time-clock for the pool filter, so it runs during the night and turns off before the start of peak time at 9:00 a.m. in the morning. I also turned off the refrigerator and unplugged the TV and cable box in our guest apartment. (While I was up there, I turned down the gas thermostat on the hot water heater, — in for a penny, in for a pound, I always say). Kathy and I agreed that we will also try to get in the habit of not running our dishwasher until after 9:00 p.m. (or before 9:00 a.m.), and of doing more laundry on weekends, when off-peak rates are in effect 24 hours a day. In the coming weeks and months, I will post periodic updates on the additional steps we’re taking to reduce our peak-time consumption, and run some projections based on our actual usage.

One Response to “Time of Day Electric Metering — Stepping Gingerly Into the Future”

1. Mike Says:
   July 26th, 2009 at 5:16 pm

   Any updates on the new meter and if you are saving anything??
   My wife was really upset when she found out, after running the dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, etc. only after 9:00 pm or on weekends for 10 years, that the electric company has no idea what our time of day usage is and has been charging us a flat rate.

   So - needless to say - we are thinking about asking for one of these meters ourselves. Did it cost anything?? Have you noticed any savings?? Did it make sense??

   Any updates would be appreciated. Thanks!

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