Plants, Poles and Plugs
Electric Companies Are Working With Their Customers To Use Energy More Efficiently.
Electric companies work with their customers on ways that consumers can reduce their electricity use and control their energy bills with energyefficiency programs. Programs include cash rebates, direct load-control programs, low-interest loans to buy energy-efficient appliances, and home energy audits to help consumers learn where they can reduce their energy use.
Energy-efficiency programs are making a difference. Between 1989 and 2005, electric company demand-side management programs saved almost 797 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity. That is enough to power almost 74 million average U.S. homes for one year.[3]
Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration. Some utilities were spending money on DSM as early as 1976. National data are not available for expenditures from 1976-1988.
Electric companies now are pursuing a variety of innovative business and regulatory approaches that will encourage the use of state-of-the-art efficiency technologies and services. They also are pursing actions to seize a wide range of opportunities to improve energy efficiency. These are improving the efficiency of buildings and appliances, accelerating the development of advanced metering infrastructure, supporting innovative rates and regulation, advancing more efficient distribution transformers, and encouraging the development of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
[3]U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency, Electric Power Annual 2005, October 2006.
