Commentary

The electricity provider is Vectren Energy and the program is called Summer Cycler.  Vectren serves the Ohio/Indiana area.  The program is designed to reduce peak electricity loads because those are the short periods each year that drive new power plant construction and electricity costs.  It's like traffic on a highway.  22 hours a day, there is plenty of highway capacity but during rush hour there is two to three times the demand for highway travel and traffic slows to a crawl. 

Here is how the Vectren program works.

Vectren customers choose to enroll in the program.  Vectren comes to the customer's home and installs a radio-controlled switch on major electric appliances such as air conditioners and hot water heaters.  The switch enables Vectren to turn off those major appliances for "brief" periods of time during peak load periods typically during late summer afternoons.  Vectren says that the switch works just like the appliance's thermostat so that there is no harm done to the appliance.  The periods are brief enough so that there is "little or no customer discomfort or inconvenience".

In return, Vectren's customers get to help the environment and up to a $28 credit each summer.  Very interesting.

This problem of how to manage peak electricity demand is a significant one.  We pay one rate for our electricity no matter when we use it.  This contrasts with long distance telephone service, hotels, air travel, etc. which charge different rates depending on the season, day of the week or time of day.  The rates vary because demand varies.

We may like the single rate we pay for electricity but a side affect of the single rate is that it lowers demand for clean solar-generated electricity.

Sunny, hot summer afternoons are when the cost of electricity is highest and sunny afternoons are when solar panels are at their peak output.  So if we were paying the true higher cost of electricity in the afternoon (and a lower rate the rest of the time) solar panels for your home would have a bigger competitive advantage.  Perhaps large enough to arrange the installation.