Massachusetts public power utility Templeton Municipal Light & Water Plant is joining Connected Homes, the innovative residential demand response program offered by the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company.
Connected Homes allows residential customers to better manage Wi-Fi-connected devices in their homes while reducing their carbon footprint.
Connected Homes, launched in April 2020 with an initial group of 11 municipal light plants, is offered through MMWEC’s electrification and decarbonization program, NextZero.
NextZero works through Connected Homes to allow customers of the participating municipal light plants to leverage the technology of smart appliances and devices into energy and cost savings for the light department and its customers.
By enrolling a smart device in the Connected Homes program, customers agree to allow their light department to make brief, limited adjustments to their devices during times of peak electric demand, such as temporarily reducing the charging rate of an electric vehicle during peak hours.
Customers are informed of possible adjustments in advance via email or text message and given the choice to opt out of each adjustment. Customers are rewarded for their enrollment via quarterly bill credits.
TMLWP joins 16 other MLPs currently participating in Connected Homes, including those in Belmont, Chicopee, Hingham, Holden, Holyoke, Ipswich, Mansfield, Marblehead, Peabody, Princeton, Reading, Shrewsbury, South Hadley, Sterling, Wakefield, and West Boylston.
Specific brands and models of thermostats, home batteries, electric vehicles and chargers, electric hot water heaters, and mini-split controllers are eligible for incentives under the Connected Homes program.
Connected Homes is helping TMLWP and its customers make the clean energy transition by making the electrification of residential heating, transportation, and cooking put less stress on the electric grid, while reducing end use carbon emissions. Through participation in Connected Homes, the growing number of customers moving toward electrification can easily and conveniently manage their home’s energy use by adjusting the device’s energy usage remotely, or by setting an automatic schedule.
“It’s great to allow residential customers to join us in our efforts to control both capacity and transmission costs affecting our ratepayers,” says TMLWP General Manager John Driscoll.
“We are excited to bring Connected Homes to Templeton residents as the Connected Homes program and its offerings grow in 2025,” says Zoe Eckert, MMWEC’s Sustainable Energy Policy and Program Senior Manager.
Templeton Municipal Light and Water Plant serves approximately 3,750 electric customers and approximately 2,244 water customers in Templeton, East Templeton, Baldwinville and Otter River.
MMWEC is a not-for-profit, public corporation and political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts created by an Act of the General Court in 1975 and authorized to issue tax-exempt debt to finance a wide range of energy facilities.
MMWEC provides a variety of power supply, financial, risk management and other services to the state’s consumer-owned, municipal utilities.
