efficient use of energy - real time monitoring (Peak Energy Rewards)

[scruffy1]

agl seems keen to have me Join AGL Peak Energy Rewards and you could get bill credits for reducing your home energy use during...

it's a leap of faith to participate when i am already pretty energy frugal, and have no real time way to see if i am meeting an invisible target

i note that victorians are able to receive a powerpal device simply by applying, and thus can undertake real time monitoring which would certainly make it easier to see what differences we can make in peak use events

plan b is to attempt to conserve power by switching things off, or ramping up the ambient temperature on the aircon, and perhaps getting rewarded (or not) for accepting less personal comfort in that period.. and no way of telling till we have already restricted our use and get assessed

surely if you wish to encourage participation, you might consider either supplying the device to people who agree to sign up for the program, or negotiate a decent discount for them by making a bulk purchase to distribute at cost or less

i'm motivated to help in times of peak load, but reluctant to do so without any available timely feedback on whether my actions will be rewarded, or the warm glow will be simply be that the aircon is off and i'm hotter and no better off financially

surely you would get much higher compliance if it was obvious that the effort will be paid for

thanks for any response to this simple and effective suggestion to improve uptake of the program

[Xander-AGL · Accepted solution]

Hi @scruffy1 - thank you for your post.

If you have the AGL app, you can see updates daily with your usage segmented into half hour increments, so you can fact check this for yourself, or as you have indicated, the powerpal is also available to you.
Kind regards,
Xander

[scruffy1]

thanks, that's very useful

it's a pity it's not online on the site as well, which is convenient given 25" of screen versus a phone

[David_AGL]

Hi @scruffy1 , thanks for the feedback, I'll pass it along to the Peak Energy Rewards team. 

I'm a user of the program myself, and I've previously received targets in terms of "use 10% less than your expected usage", which makes it a little easier to conceptualize. Now they seem to be expressed in kWh values of usage for the hour.

Regardless, the targets tend to be pretty easy to hit, so while real time monitoring would make it easier to fine-tune, I haven't had any issues with missing them. I generally just shut the AC/heater off for the hour, which is probably a bigger reduction than needed.

[NeilC]

@scruffy1 

If you log onto your My Usage page, then select View Usage,  you will see the same graph, click on any day to get a view of the days usage.

[scruffy1]

@David_AGL

i have looked at the app, and that's a bit useless in that there is a lag of over a day to see what my use was presented as half hour portions

the idea is good, but the delay makes it only useful for analysis, rather than real time monitoring

why isn't that info more easily accessible?  it can't take a computer a day and a half to register real time info

and as an aside, how does agl pull that data on a daily basis? i'm curious

and why isn't agl keen to encourage uptake of powerpal?  a bulk buy would make it cheaper, surely?

and as a target, what sort of kwh reduction are they wanting?  my half hour "bits" measure between 0.25 and 0.5kwh unless i'm cooking

[David_AGL · Accepted solution]

@scruffy1 - Although your digital meter does measure your usage live, the data is only sent to retailers (ie AGL) once a day, so unfortunately we can't display it in real time. There's at least a 24-hour delay built in, and in some cases other factors can delay it further.

We've actually trialled and looked into similar devices to the Powerpal that enable real-time monitoring previously, and likely continue to do so, though I'm not personally across any current plans. Giving customers better access to usage data to help measure their energy use is definitely a priority.