This week, EnergyHub announces the addition of Sawnee Electric Membership Corporation as a new customer for Bring Your Own Thermostat® (BYOT) demand response. Sawnee EMC is an electric distribution cooperative headquartered in Cumming, Georgia and serves approximately 161,500 customers in greater north Georgia. 

EnergyHub will provide turnkey program management services to Sawnee, and Sawnee will manage all aspects of its new demand response program, called Sawnee Smart Savers, using EnergyHub’s Mercury demand response platform. The program will launch in early May. By using the Mercury platform, Sawnee was able to quickly scale up and launch a BYOT program that included many of the leading connected thermostat vendors within weeks of contract signature.

The new Sawnee program incorporates two best practices designed to streamline program enrollment and improve customer satisfaction in BYOT demand response programs. Sawnee will allow members to enroll in the program without having to look up their account numbers, ensuring that interested utility customers are not mistakenly denied access to the program. Additionally, Sawnee’s program will allow members to opt out of specific demand response events at their convenience, which EnergyHub has found increases customer satisfaction without reducing kW yield per-device. For more information on how offering opt-out can improve a demand response program, check out our connected thermostat stats deck.

Pioneered by EnergyHub in 2012, BYOT is a customer-centric approach to demand response that allows consumers to buy and install the thermostat of their choice and enroll that thermostat in their local utility’s demand response program. 

Interesting in learning more about how EnergyHub is working with Sawnee EMC for BYOT demand response? Check out the press release on sawnee.com.