Energy "On-Call" Program on Rental Units

[bphgravity]

Florida Power and Light offers an On-Call Program, which allows them to cycle on and off certain appliances for short periods of time as a method to save energy and balance the grid at peak energy usage hours.

Earlier this week, my mother starting complaining about her air conditioning at her rental apartment. She lives in a multi-family complex and has a standard one-year lease contract. She has been there about 4 years now.

Her complaint is that the air is not keeping the apartment cool no matter how low she sets the thermostat, but at other times it gets too cold. I finally got by there last night to see what is going on and found that the apartment complex has installed these on-call devices on her and everyone's outdoor a/c unit. Neither the apartment association nor FPL ever notified her of this. She pays for electrical service directly to FPL.

It now appears that FPL can cycle off her A/C for a period of 15 minutes every half hour for a total of three hours a day. She is home all day and can immediately tell when the a/c is cycled off as the apartment warms up.

I am not sure about the legal aspects of this situation. Do you think she has the right to request the device to be removed or does the complex owner have the right to control her a/c energy usage?

Any advice would be great...

 

[hardworkingstiff]

Bryan,

I believe you may be more in touch with the legal issues than I am. I sure hope you come back and let us know what happens.

 

[growler]

I like to do things the simple way so I would make a request in writing that the device be removed. This should force the management of the complex to respond. They may not be any better informed as to the legality of the situation than you are. Let the lawyers for the apartment complex figure out how legal this is.

 

[mdshunk]

In my area, those energy management units are only installed on dwellings in which the occupant is recieving a credit on their bill for having such units installed. They use them on the AC and the water heaters. I'd check to make sure she's not getting some sort of credit on the bill. It is possible that a previous occupant was getting the credit, but the energy management unit remains. If it was me that was uncomfortable, there'd be nothing stopping me from cutting the seal on that and putting in a pair of jumper bars. It's not a meter, so you can't get in trouble for meter tampering. That's just me talking, though.