USA Today: Bright idea makes a big comeback: Conservation
Nearly all businesses share an all-consuming mission: sell, sell, sell. McDonald's wants to peddle more hamburgers. Airlines strive to fill every seat. Phone companies want you to make more calls.
But power companies these days are increasingly being told by regulators to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into selling less electricity.
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This isn't the first time conservation has captured the nation's fancy. The first efficiency wave was triggered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Utilities largely ditched those efforts in the mid-1990s, believing deregulation would breed new competition and lower prices. The competition never came, and efficiency has been on a gradual upswing since 2000.
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Further feeding the industry's interest in efficiency are new technologies that make that Energy Star refrigerator seem quaint. Just a few years away are smart meters linked to smart appliances via computers, or even the Internet.
After reading tomorrow's forecast for hot weather, your air conditioner could cool the house in the morning, when prices are low, and scale back midday when costs spike. That would save consumers money and help utilities reduce strain on the power grid during peak demand.
Technology "is what's really moving (energy efficiency) forward," Rogers says. "It makes things possible that weren't possible before."
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