Would you sweat out a heatwave for $2.50 per hour?

By Steve Milloy —— Bio and Archives July 15, 2009

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Following up on yesterday’s story about Baltimore Gas & Electric’s program to install 2 million Obama-meters in homes, BG&E says that on peak days (i.e., very hot days when there’s a lot of demand for air conditioning), its Obama-meters helped…

… lots of customers cut power use [between 2p-7pm] to 30kwh from 40kwh… [earning a rebate of] $12.50 for that day,

according to a report in SmartGridToday. So that works out to being paid $2.50 per hour to sweat at home — much less than the minimum wage, which is scheduled to rise to $7.25 per hour on July 24. Of course, if you went to the shopping mall or visited neighbors with air conditioning on those days then it would be money-for-nothing. Imagine if entire neighborhoods gathered in one air-conditioned house on “peak days” (house-pooling?) everyone could save $12.50, less the cover charge for the home in which everyone “pooled” to play that new board game, Cap and Charade.