Client Profiles - Residential

Tom Harr
Loveland, CO

In 2004 Tom Harr decided to build an all electric home in the mountains of Loveland, CO. This was unheard of at the time considering most homes in the area are heated by propane. Tom is a retired electrical engineer who has taken great interest in green energy and sustainability. Due to this interest, he decided to design and build his new home to be as energy efficient as possible while cutting down on his electric costs.

Poudre Valley REA has a Time Of Use (TOU) rate for residential homes, and Tom wanted to capitalize on this to increase cost savings. He contacted Brayden Automation about their Energy Sentry 9388A demand management system. The interesting part about Tom’s story is that he wasn’t going to use the Energy Sentry for demand control but instead for TOU. Instead of programming the 9388A to shed loads automatically when reaching a peak, he programmed it to turn off certain loads at certain times of the day. By doing this he is able to utilize Poudre Valley REA’s TOU rate and save hundreds on his electric bills every year.

The remarkable part of Tom’s story is how much he saves by utilizing the TOU rate with an all electric home. In the past three years, Tom has saved a total of $2,865 – that is an average of $955 per year. Tom spends $2,400 a year on his electric bills. This includes his 4,600 sq. ft. house, 2,100 sq. ft. shop, and a hot tub that is used daily. According to Poudre Valley REA’s website, a “typical” 2,000 sq. ft. home heated by natural gas costs $2,994 and one heated by electricity costs $3,850 per year. Tom has over three times the amount of square footage and pays much less than both “typical” natural gas and unregulated electric homes. By using the 9388A Tom has cut his electric bills by almost a third.

Tom also incorporates EnergyAccess into his energy saving system.

Leisure World
Seal Beach, CA

Clarence Fuqua contacted Brayden Automation in 2006 to inquire about a demand control device for his HOA’s laundry rooms. Clarence is a resident of Mutual Eight in Leisure World Seal Beach, California, a senior citizen community of approximately 9,000 residents. Groups of residential units are organized into “Stock Cooperatives” (mutuals) similar to a HOA. Each mutual operates one or more laundry rooms. Each laundry room is typically equipped with 6 washers, 6 dryers and two electric water heaters. The laundry rooms’ demand had exceeded 30KW, even 35KW in some cases, requiring them to be moved to Southern California Edison’s GS-2 (commercial) rate. On the GS-2 rate summer peak demand is billed at approximately $32.00 per KW making it one of the highest demand charges in the USA. By keeping the demand below 20KW, the laundry rooms were returned to the GS-1 (residential) rate which does not contain a separate demand charge.

As of July 2010, seven additional Leisure World mutual associations have now installed an Energy Sentry Model 9388B in their laundry rooms and savings have been approximately $4,400 per year (Mutual Eight has solar so their savings are $8,800 per year) by keeping below 20KW and on the GS-1 rate. This is about a 40% reduction compared to what they paid the previous year.

Based on the success of the demand control systems in the laundry rooms, Leisure World has begun to deploy the systems in other buildings. An administration building was installed in 2008 and the swimming pool facility was installed in late 2009. In 2011 and early 2012, over 30 units were installed in various locations throughout the community, continuing to reduce electric costs.