Utilities are tapping into customers’ solar panels, home batteries and smart thermostats to avoid blackouts in a program establishing “virtual power plants.”
  • Mbourgon everywhere@lemmy.world
    11·
    7 months ago

    FtfA: “who signed up for the energy-saving program in exchange for a discount on her monthly power bill.”

    But there are other reasons - willingness to have temporary higher temps in exchange for fewer/no brownouts/blackouts.

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
    9·
    7 months ago

    Why doesn’t Texas connect to the federal US power grid? It certainly isn’t freedom for its customers.

    a Houston homeowner, didn’t have to touch her thermostat to pitch in. Her utility company remotely shut off her air conditioner nine times that day as part of a power-saving strategy

    9 times a day? I get annoyed at setting the oven microwave clocks each time but 9 times would be too much. And each day! That’s not freedom that Texas wants - they want to keep a deliberately bad grid away from federal inspection that would require the company to spend money on upgrading and updating their shit.