Olympic Peninsula Project Final Report

In January 2008, the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory released the results of a year long study showing that if households have digital tools to control temperature and price preferences, peak demand can be reduced by 15% and customers’ utility bills can be decreased by 10%. The project was comprised of two separate studies to test demand-response concepts and technologies:

• The Olympic Peninsula Project (download report above) was one of the first in the country to demonstrate that homeowners are willing to adjust their energy-use based on real-time price signals provided through in-home technology tools.
• The Grid Friendly Appliance Project demonstrated that everyday household appliances can automatically lower energy consumption at critical moments, if they are fitted with controllers that receive information about stress on the grid.

These reports offer some of the few publicly available results from actual pilot projects.