Energy Conservation Incentive Programs

Yesterday, I wrote about our so far nasty experience with our municipal hydro provider setting up the PeakSaver program.  The premise is, the municipal hydro provider wants you to give up a bit of control over your hydro usage if needed and in return they give you an incentive for signing up.  So far, the municipal hydro provider is winning and we are left with a pile of electronic junk thanks to BlueLine.  Seriously, with out experience using the BlueLine Monitor and the BlueLine WiFi Bridge, I wouldn't wish either on my worst enemy!  Talk about crap and I do mean crap!  Now, at the moment I am not naming our municipal hydro provider (although they claim to be all about integrity but so far I've seen none of that) but I will and I have every intention of going through my MP (already contacted) and the BBB as well as reporting BlueLine to the BBB.  Seriously, pissing off consumers is not the way to go about getting them interesting in energy conservation.

Energy conservation programs rightly executed are awesome as it was done through Ontario Hydro.  Everyone was a winner.  We got a new programmable thermostat and they got a customer who didn't mind them cycling our hydro during the summer if needed.  So incentive programs do work. We knew what the incentive was through Ontario Hydro but not through our municipal hydro.  That was our mistake or my mistake because I am the primary with respect to energy conservation especially grants and that type of thing.  I should have came right out at asked the municipality hydro provider what the incentive was and then did the research before saying we wanted it.  This serves as a reminder BEFORE you sign up to any energy conservation program, do your research first.  It will save you a lot of headaches in the end.

The New PeakSaver Goodies - A MAJOR FAIL!

When we moved into our fifth purchased home in 2007 our goal as with all of the houses we have owned was to make it as energy efficient as possible.  At that time we were dealing with Ontario Hydro, who supplies municipal hydro companies and is by far a lot nicer to deal with than the municipal ones.  We signed up for their PeakSaver program which gave us a $25 rebate off our hydro bill and a new Honeywell Programmable Thermostat.  We bought our sixth (actually seventh if you count our vacation home) in 2011 so I immediately called the municipal hydro company to sign up for the PeakSaver program.  What this program does is allow the hydro company to remotely adjust your thermostat by 3 degrees during the heavy air conditioning usage during the summer months if there are brown out conditions.  Honestly, I think they only did it three times in the four years we owned that house.

My husband was very excited that he was going to get a new thermostat.  NO!  What they gave us as an incentive was a BlueLine WiFi Bridge, a PowerCost Monitor and a Coby tablet so we can monitor and control our hydro use online.  Now the real problem is, the technician installed the remote on the AC unit and the sensor on the meter but then just handed me the boxes and the rest has turned into a bloody nightmare!

The WiFi Bridge if working properly would allow us to remotely control our furnace and AC from the cloud (online program accessible anywhere).  Since we are away a lot, this would be a nice cost saving and energy conservation feature BUT after several failed attempts at installing it, several reboots, disabling my firewall and two and a half days on the phone with BlueLine customer support I have nothing but a piece of junk!  The BlueLine PowerCost Monitor is rather nice as you can see the power usage and cost as you are using it BUT it doesn't work properly.  The numbers are off as it right now it is telling me it is 60°F outside when in fact it is 29°F and the dang thing keeps going into sleep mode.  It would be a very nice visual if it worked properly.  I have to tell you I am really not impressed with BlueLine products.  It has been two weeks trying to get this figured out and settled so Monday morning I will be calling my hydro company and ask them to remove the PeakSaver and give them back all their pieces of crap.

You know this really does tick me off.  They want you to conserve energy and set up programs to help you conserve energy then give you a crappy incentive that doesn't even work!  It would be bad enough if one of the pieces of equipment they gave us didn't work, but none of them do.  Oh wait a minute, the Colby table works but it isn't anything I couldn't do on my iPad to begin with.  At least the thermostat they gave us as an incentive last time worked!  In terms of customer loyalty and energy conservation this particular program through the municipality hydro company is a huge FAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!