Are You Keeping Up With The Joneses?

We all have a little touch of competition in us; hence the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” – the idea that the mysterious Jones family in your neighborhood may be doing a little better than you. The sneaking suspicion that perhaps you’re not as affluent or as content as your neighbors can encourage you to make your lawn tidier, your car nicer, and your Christmas lights a bit showier each year. 

 

Would the same principle hold true if you were trying to keep up with the Jones’s energy efficiency? Duke Energy is hoping so. 

 

Later this year, Duke Energy intends to ask regulators to allow them to share neighborhood average energy consumption with households that have higher than average energy consumption. If you’re the owner of a home that has high energy consumption, you may receive a mailer letting you know that your utility bills are out of line with averages, and giving you some tips and incentives to reduce consumption. This exercise in behavioral science should, in theory, shame and/or motivate homeowners with sky-high utility bills into being more energy efficient to match their neighbors. - a theory that Duke Energy says has already been proven with testing in Ohio and South Carolina.

 

Now, there are always folks in every neighborhood who KNOW that their home isn’t as efficient as it could be, but haven’t yet managed to budget for home improvements. If you’re one of them, and you want to avoid that Duke Energy mailer this Fall, take a second to enter our $5000 Energy Remodel Contest and you could win your home’s energy makeover for free this summer.