Green Newton

As temperatures climb in the summer months and air conditioners kick on, a heavy electric demand could mean the the power company needs to supplement with dirty ‘peaker’ power plants. Peaker power plants are often old, inefficient, and very expensive to operate. They run primarily on natural gas and oil. The more we can do to keep peak energy use down, the higher the chance these polluting plants will not be used.

Enroll in Green Energy Consumers Alliance’s Shave the Peak program, and you will get a friendly reminder text with information on what you can do to curtail energy consumption during peak hours. The highest peak use on a sunny day might be about 6–8pm, which could trigger the operation of peaker plants.

Here are practical ways to “shave the peak” during those specific hours:

• Pre-cooling. Use your air-conditioner in a couple of rooms before 5 pm. Then turn the air conditioner down a few degrees at 6pm.
• Draw the blinds to keep the sun from heating up rooms.
• Consider using fans to cool off instead of air conditioning because they use far less electricity.
• Plan your trip to the air-conditioned library or mall during peak hours.
• Plan to wash or dry the laundry or run the dishwasher in off-peak hours.
• Charge your electric car from  9pm to 7am.

Sign up for Shave the Peak to get reminders to reduce your electricity use when it matters most.

Note: Our air would be cleaner and we would be paying a lot less for power if we shifted power use to off-peak hours on a year-round basis, but it’s especially important when the weather is hot.