Communicating thermostats are an untapped treasure trove of energy savings for ducted heat pump installations. As currently deployed, they share their data with users that mostly fall into one or more of these categories of home owners: ignorant, disinterested, confused, distracted, procrastinators and excessively busy. The data needs to come to the attention of those who are capable and motivated to act when action is called for. There are two parts to this measure: (1) The home needs to have a thermostat installed that is capable of recording and reporting when the strip heat is activated. (2) An agreement exists whereby the utility has timely access to that information and permission to contact their customer to discuss issues as they become apparent. The assumption here is that virtually every ducted heat pump will experience occurrences when they are functioning at other-than acceptable levels of performance - they are running, but not well. In many/most instances the home owner is not aware other than it seems that their energy bill seems somewhat higher than expected. A few will act on this information immediately. Many others will let it slide for a while. And, sadly there are also many who won't act until the situation is critical. And for the utilities, even with those that have AMI meters, that information available to them is coarse, imprecise, and doesn't allow them to specifically identify the heat pump as the culprit. Other utilities have meters that just provide daily reads. And, some utilities (because of the cost of the technology), still don't have AMI; all they have is monthly reads - a desperately sad scenario. This measure would give the utility specific and actionable information. Not a part of this measure but very essential to it, is the trust between the customer and the utility and their ability to sell the benefit to their customer. There are doubtless, those who adamantly would never want to share this info with the utility. Others would be reluctant but would find value in the concept. Surely most would see the benefit and would willingly sign-up. The onus would be on the utility to make the case to their customer: convincing them that it would help them control their energy costs and extend the life of the equipment (heat pump). In the long run it should also help to keep the electric rate of the utility more manageable. Very importantly, for the utility ,this could be a significant tool for having more control of their demand during extreme weather conditions. The agreement would also spell out when and how (text message, email, phone call) and when the customer would be notified. Also, under what situations the utility could/would follow up as necessary. An interesting item is the monetary incentive (if any) that the customer might expect for continued participation. In my mind, a modest spiff for signing up would be in order. I would like to think that the utility would see enough benefit (re demand, etc.) to give a modest break on the electric rate. But, that is in the weeds and presumably not a part of the measure. One other factor that seems appropriate to note: identifying homes that are experiencing the results of ill-performing heat pumps could be a time consuming and expensive investment for the utility. It occurs to me that this would be yet another task that AI is extremely well suited to.
