Smart thermostats are helping Arizona's grid ride out… | Canary Media

In Arizona, utilities have used a counterintuitive tool to help keep the lights on despite the state’s ongoing wave of historic heat — they’ve asked customers to turn their air conditioners down. In July and August, Arizona’s three biggest utilities were able to call on more than 100,000 customers to reduce their electricity use by a total of 276 megawatts during afternoon and evening hours when demand for power was at its peak. For most of those same months, the southern Arizona territories served by those utilities were in the midst of a record-setting stretch of consecutive days over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. These statistics come from EnergyHub, the company that operates smart-thermostat-based demand-response programs for utilities Arizona Public Service, Salt River Project and Tucson Electric Power. Like many utilities across the country, APS, SRP and TEP offer incentives and free or discounted smart thermostats for customers who agree to let the utility remotely turn their temperat

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