GE says smart panel to cut power bills

By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co said it is developing a control panel that should allow homeowners to trim rising utility bills by helping manage power and water consumption.

The "eco-dashboard" will be available in December in new home developments in southern and western U.S. states, areas where power and water supplies are particularly stressed, Juan de Bedout, a renewable energy specialist at GE's global research center in Niskayuna, New York said late last week.

The panel is designed to show ratepayers how much money they would save if, for example, they pre-cooled or pre-heated their homes before electricity prices went up during periods of peak load, typically in the early evening. They also could set the panel to turn up the air conditioning, or run the clothes drier only when the power price gets below a certain level.

"This allows homeowners to make decisions on whether they would like to change their behavior to be more green," said de Bedout. "It gives them a tool set."

Power utilities must provide real-time information on electricity rates to homes for such smart systems to work, but more are doing so as it becomes more difficult and expensive for them to build new power plants.

Jason Makansi, author of "Lights Out," a book about the poor state of the U.S. power grid, said such "smart" demand controls could cut consumers' power consumption by about 3 percent to 5 percent. In some areas of the country, such savings could obviate the need for utilities to build power plants, which can cost billions of dollars.

Until now, most consumers have been ignorant about how much their power costs on a daily basis, but such real-time information should help them change consumption habits, he said. Once consumers know more about what in their homes is pushing up their power bills, they should change their habits, similar to they way drivers often decide where to fill up their cars by looking at pump prices, he added.

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