Inside Report

Lafayette Utilities System wants control of your air conditioning.

The city-owned utility will not force control on its customers, but LUS Director Terry Huval said there are plans to seek willing participants for what would likely be a rarely used tool to stave off rolling blackouts.

Air conditioners use a lot of electricity, and the Acadiana region’s electrical transmission grid has been strained in recent years as more air conditioners run full blast to keep up with summer temperatures.

If LUS had the ability to cut off a certain percentage of air-conditioning compressors for a few minutes, it could relieve the strain on the grid just long enough to get through a tough spot that might otherwise force the utility company to begin shutting off power completely to some areas of town.

Huval said customers would likely be offered some economic incentive to participate, such as discounts on their bills.

The air handler fan could still be left running to circulate air in the home even if the utility company elected to cut the compressor for a few minutes, he said.

Similar programs are in place in other areas of the country, allowing utility companies to control not only air-conditioning compressors but also water heaters, heat pumps and, in colder climates, heating strips.

Some utility companies offer participating customers savings that range from about $2 a month to more than $100 for the year, depending on the level of control a customer relinquishes to the company.

The possibility of LUS controlling air conditioners comes with the new “smart meters” the utility company is now installing.

All the new meters are scheduled to be in place by the end of 2012.

Huval has been touting the new meters as a way to cut the annual expenses for the labor and maintenance related to manually reading meters. The new meters will be read remotely at the LUS central office.

The new meters will also enable LUS to know immediately about power outages instead of depending on customer complaints, and to alert customers when power or water usage seems much higher than usual, possibly indicating a problem.

The novel ability for LUS to switch air-conditioning compressors off and on has been less of a selling point, but it could prove useful for a utility company that has routinely dealt with problems of an overloaded transmission grid.

The issue is not so much the internal system of power lines and equipment within Lafayette but rather the larger transmission grid that serves the Acadiana region.

The grid is owned by other power companies, but LUS depends on the grid because much of the electricity for the city of Lafayette is generated at a power plant near Boyce that Lafayette jointly owns with CLECO and the Louisiana Energy and Power Authority.

The electricity travels from Boyce to Lafayette over the transmission grid, which has struggled to keep up with population growth in the region.

In recent summers, utility companies have routinely urged customers in this area to conserve electricity or face the possibility of rolling blackouts.

LUS, Cleco and Entergy are in the final stages of a joint $200 million project to upgrade the grid, a project officials say should fix most of the transmission grid issues for the time being.

Barring that, utility customers might be asked to turn up the thermostat this summer, or to let LUS do it for them.

Richard Burgess covers Lafayette city-parish government for The Advocate’s Acadiana bureau. He can be reached at [e-mail].