OGE smart hours?

[Shadowrider]

This is a pretty typical day for my house. I'm home all day and work via computer/internet. I'm more aware of what I have turned on during the peak hours and actually all the time now, but I'm not real anal about it. I don't go around and unplug surge strips or anything. I just use fans in the room that I'm in for awhile. If you aren't going to be in a room turn off the fans, TV, etc. Pretty basic stuff. I have my t-stat set at 76 until 2:00 and then it goes up to 80. At 7:00PM it goes back to 76 and at 10:00 it's down to 75 and sometimes I'll overide it to 74. I don't like to sweat when I sleep. No I don't have their t-stat. I have my own with a wireless remote. As you can see the central A/C is by far the biggest factor in your usage. My bill hasn't topped $100 yet this summer.

[Broken External Image]

 

[subprep]

I was trying to read up on smart meters yesterday.... good lord, some people claim they are making them sick because of some kind of waves or something they put out, some disease about electro magnet sensitivity or something? they also claim wi fi makes them ill.... I mean the reason I don't like them is because they have the power companies have a whole lot more control over your meter and some "smart chipped appliances" i'm not comfortable with that aspect of it. and I do know that some folks cant be exposed to microwaves and those giant power lines but a meter making you sick seems a little far fetched?

 

[dowmace]

This is a pretty typical day for my house. I'm home all day and work via computer/internet. I'm more aware of what I have turned on during the peak hours and actually all the time now, but I'm not real anal about it. I don't go around and unplug surge strips or anything. I just use fans in the room that I'm in for awhile. If you aren't going to be in a room turn off the fans, TV, etc. Pretty basic stuff. I have my t-stat set at 76 until 2:00 and then it goes up to 80. At 7:00PM it goes back to 76 and at 10:00 it's down to 75 and sometimes I'll overide it to 74. I don't like to sweat when I sleep. No I don't have their t-stat. I have my own with a wireless remote. As you can see the central A/C is by far the biggest factor in your usage. My bill hasn't topped $100 yet this summer.

http://s12.photobucket.com/user/shearn3162/media/ScreenShot2013-07-26at50439PM_zpseaf8ab59.png.html

74? That's like the Sahara desert!

 

[buckeye]

Seriously. My ancestors (both near and far) sweated away their summers in misery, I'm taking advantage of plentiful electricity and the magic physics/chemistry box in the backyard. I'm still upset they're continuously outlawing the most effective refrigerants, man those R-12 car A/C systems would put frost on the end of your nose.

 

[NightShade]

I was trying to read up on smart meters yesterday.... good lord, some people claim they are making them sick because of some kind of waves or something they put out, some disease about electro magnet sensitivity or something? they also claim wi fi makes them ill.... I mean the reason I don't like them is because they have the power companies have a whole lot more control over your meter and some "smart chipped appliances" i'm not comfortable with that aspect of it. and I do know that some folks cant be exposed to microwaves and those giant power lines but a meter making you sick seems a little far fetched?

The only difference is that the old meters would use a different measurement system vs the new ones actually using electronics, otherwise the measurement is the same. They do connect to each other and to a contact point that routes the info to the utilities computers but you have to figure that you have so many signals bouncing off your skull that one more isn't going to make much difference.

People claiming that wifi and other radio signals make them sick are full of it. The sun itself puts off tons of signals. . . ever change to a nonexistent radio station and hear static? It's not because there is no signal but because there is tons of signals created by the earth itself, the electronics all around us and the sun. If there was no interference from outside signals you could almost literally power a radio station with a 9v battery and have that station heard from extreme distances.

As far as the meter/power company controlling appliances, that is first and foremost optional. They can't just reach in and turn your tv off or your refrigerator or anything else. The only things I have even heard of being able to be controlled are water heaters and the thermostat for the HVAC system anyway. The people who sign up for the programs are doing so to save money, if I wasn't saving over my neighbors I wouldn't be on the program. . . have a guy a few places down from mine who's last bill was over 200 and mine was 111 you may have to suffer a little during the heat of the day but if you prepare for the increase in temp it's not too bad.

I turn my computer off as it has a 700 watt psu and puts out quite a bit of heat, sometimes I just watch netflix on my tablet even though my LED tv uses about the same amount of juice as a 60 watt light bulb. Don't use hot water or the stove, and set the ac temp up. If I get hot I step in the shower and just use cold water. . . since it's hot out anyway and the water lines are very shallow to begin with it's not really cold anyway. When I step out and dry off it feels great so whats the difference right? I use more power than my "neighbors" and pay less because I don't use the juice during a certain time period.

Most people have a rate plan that starts off at a certain amount (was like 9 or 10 cents per KWH) and then steps up to another amount after a certain amount of power is used (this price used to be around 16 or 18 cents per kwh after like 1000 were used). Had I been on that plan my last bill would have been around 170, I used 1411 kwh and paid 111.95

On the weekends I set it around 72 during the day and at night I may drop it to 70 depending on how I feel, during the week I generally drop it to 72 at night and have dropped it to 70 when I can't get comfortable. During the week I generally only have about an hour or two where it is even slightly uncomfortable. . . and if its 100 outside all you have to do is step out for a bit and then the 80 inside feels pretty good.

 

[subprep]

thats what I was thinking about all the signals and waves etc bouncing around there are signals everywhere "you can't stop the signal mal" :-) I just can't wrap my head around that making someone ill... I do understand how electromanetic stuff affects people with pacemakers etc.

I still don't trust that the voluntary power company plan will remain that way, the powers that be love to do stuff for our own good you know! I guess I don't suffer as much in the heat because I keep my thermostat on 76* in the warmer months, and 68* in the winter. I'm also the light police, it just comes naturally and I like to save money so our utils aren't that high my last electric bill was 105.00 and I have 2 ac units. And we are oddly competitive in our household we try to hold out the longest to see who breaks and turns on the Heater or AC LOL so we usually go a couple of months or so a year without running the hvac at all LOL I grew up without ac so I completely remember how to stay cool! When I was a kid I used to wet a sheet, wrap it around me and lay in front of a fan LOL

Here is a question though, is the temp fluctuation hard on your HVAC unit, its always been my experience and working with hvac guys etc that the more often you vary the temp in your house the harder your system actually has to work and you are using alot of energy and wear and tear on the unit to get it back to the "optimal" temp. what do you think?

 

[BadgeBunny]

thats what I was thinking about all the signals and waves etc bouncing around there are signals everywhere "you can't stop the signal mal" :-) I just can't wrap my head around that making someone ill... I do understand how electromanetic stuff affects people with pacemakers etc.

I still don't trust that the voluntary power company plan will remain that way, the powers that be love to do stuff for our own good you know! I guess I don't suffer as much in the heat because I keep my thermostat on 76* in the warmer months, and 68* in the winter. I'm also the light police, it just comes naturally and I like to save money so our utils aren't that high my last electric bill was 105.00 and I have 2 ac units. And we are oddly competitive in our household we try to hold out the longest to see who breaks and turns on the Heater or AC LOL so we usually go a couple of months or so a year without running the hvac at all LOL I grew up without ac so I completely remember how to stay cool! When I was a kid I used to wet a sheet, wrap it around me and lay in front of a fan LOL

Here is a question though, is the temp fluctuation hard on your HVAC unit, its always been my experience and working with hvac guys etc that the more often you vary the temp in your house the harder your system actually has to work and you are using alot of energy and wear and tear on the unit to get it back to the "optimal" temp. what do you think?

Here in the big city we didn't have a choice. They came out a few years ago and put a "smart meter" on the house ... We aren't using the Smart Power program. I keep thinking about it but never seem to gather up the energy ... LOL I dunno about your other question. Makes sense but then again don't ACs have a ton of wear and tear on them during July and August already anyway?

 

[NightShade]

In an apartment so honestly for the AC I don't care if it runs a long time or doesn't. The ones that were put in here were the cheapest things possible and you can hear where some of them have started having issues already. There can be two major problems when you have an AC unit. . . the compressor cycling too often is the one that is the worse of the two from my understanding the other is the unit running constantly. If you bought a 40 ton unit for a 1000 sq foot house the first would come in to play, the unit would likely kick on for less than five minutes and then kick off. They are designed to run for generally 15 to 20 minute minimums. If the compressor was to run for an extremely extended amount of time say 3 or 4 hours that could be another problem as it can also excessively wear the unit especially if every time it kicks on it runs like that and it will also hurt your wallet more.

With the smart hours I have my thermostat set to start dropping the temp a couple degrees in the early morning if I haven't done so late that night and then about 12:30 it drops a couple more degrees to precool the apartment, it shuts off about 5 minutes before two and stays off till about 5 minutes after seven and will run for a couple hours since we generally start cooking around the same time.

As far as if the smart hours would do you any good, well it's possible at least during the summer. You sound like you hold out quite a while to keep your energy usage down the biggest thing with smart hours is remembering that if you start to get hot at around 5:30 and want to keep saving you really have to wait till after 7pm to cool off. The program is only active during the summer so winter rates are the same as you already have and they do give you an incentive basically at the end of a year of being on the smart hours or the summer if you find that it costs more they change something and you end up getting money back anyway from what I remember. Pretty much the only way you can mess it up is if you get home at three in the afternoon and start cooking, washing clothes, washing dishes and cranking the ac down during the week.


http://ogepet.com/programs/smarthours.aspx

OG&E’s SmartHours Price Plan is no risk. At the end of your first year on the program, OG&E promises to credit your account the full difference if you pay more for electricity used than you would have on the rate you were on prior to SmartHours. And customers age 65 or over receive an additional $5 monthly discount during the summer.

 

[BadgeBunny]

OK ... so I finally bit the bullet and signed up for this ... Maybe I'm just special but the nice young man who installed OGE's thermostat programmed it for me and then went to great pains to answer my questions and even gave me a "show and tell" with the thermostat before he left.

And so far so good ... well except for GC's complaining when we are in any other mode other than "precool" ... Sheesh ... and it hasn't even been really warm since we started the program ...

I'm really anxious to see how it works out for us NEXT year ...

 

[aww snap]

so when will it be mandatory?