Energy-Saving Plan for Air Conditioners Gets Warm Reception

With the flip of a small switch next to a computer at the city of Pasadena’s power plant, Moudood A. Aslam showed how an experimental energy-saving program works.

“I just shut off 200 residential air conditioners,” said Aslam, a Water and Power Department conservation specialist. He explained that he was only conducting a test Tuesday, a balmy day for September in Southern California and not the kind of weather likely to provoke heated responses from customers.

But on hot days to come this year and in the future, the electric power departments of Pasadena and Glendale hope to turn off, ever-so-briefly and judiciously, thousands of central air-conditioning units in homes. The two cities have jointly created pilot programs this summer that pay residents of single-family houses to have their air-conditioning automatically shut off from afar.

Radio-controlled reception devices are hooked to individual residential central air units. These are controlled by operators using computers at the two cities’ power plants.

The program is designed to minimize the peaks of power usage that tax the electrical systems during the heat of summer. Participants are paid a token fee, based on the size of their units. The incentives appear as credits on utility bills and would normally range from $12 to $18 monthly for the four warmest months of June through September.

City officials concede that the program’s appeal is largely based on the spirit of environmental good citizenship. However, they judge the experiment successful on a small scale because hundreds of households already have signed up.

Pasadena has installed receivers at more than 200 residences. Glendale officials have a list of 125 volunteers and hope to double that number by year’s end.

Glendale expects to begin installation of the receivers beginning in the next week or so, said Lai Quan, senior electrical engineer in charge of planning and operations for the Glendale Public Service Department.

A key benefit to the cities, which are among the few in Los Angeles County with their own utility departments, is that limiting electric usage can help forestall the need to build new power plants or find new sources of electricity. In addition, officials say, reduced power consumption means decreased air pollution caused by the municipal power plants.

“It’s new. It’s evolving,” said George Morrow, Pasadena’s utility resource planning manager. “You can’t wait until the day you need additional power to say, ‘Let’s turn off the air conditioners.’ ”

By 1995, Pasadena officials say, they hope to involve 5,000 units, about half of the estimated 10,000 single-family residences with central air. Glendale officials say they are uncertain how many single-family units have central air.

The Glendale and Pasadena programs are patterned after one started 10 years ago by Southern California Edison, according to Tom Mossman, an energy management analyst at the Rosemead-based utility.

Under the Edison approach, central air-conditioning units at a residence can be shut off for a maximum of 15 times each year for no more than six hours at time.

More than 122,000 residential customers are participating, Mossman said. Many of those are in the San Gabriel Valley, which is principally served by the utility.

“We really don’t have much criticism of the program,’ he said.

Pasadena has a satisfied customer in Tommy K. Matsuura, who heard about the pilot program by attending a seminar offered by the city’s conservation division.

On a visit to a Monrovia shopping center--where the power failed briefly on Tuesday, Matsuura said he realized once again the importance of an energy-savings program.

Matsuura, a retired owner of a Pasadena nursery and gardening store, said: “There is not an endless supply of energy. California is going to grow and it’s going to get tougher.”

Besides the “good citizen” factor, he said, there is the practical incentive. “The day we have to build another power plant for Pasadena, it will cost me money on my electric bill,” he said. “Plus you really don’t miss anything with the air-conditioning off.”

For More Info

To obtain more information about Glendale’s central air-conditioning energy-reduction program, contact the Public Service Department’s Conservation Office at 119 N. Glendale Ave., Glendale 91206, or call (818) 548-2070, ext. 1542.

In Pasadena, contact the Water and Power Department, 150 S. Los Robles Ave. Suite 200, Pasadena 91101-9833, or phone (818) 792-7693.

Southern California Edison customers can phone the customer service number on their bill.