Real time, economic-impact display system for consumers of commoditized electric power

Claim 1

A near real-time method for helping typical consumers of price fluctuating electricity quickly prioritize their use of electricity for better cost management of their electric power consumption, is comprised of the steps of; estimating, by a utility, an upcoming time slot's price deviation from a pre-established mean price of the electricity; assigning said deviation into a quantitative, ie. high, medium or low, and positive or negative, category; estimating, during high demand periods, the gross size of any surcharge pool and bonus stake/KWH that will be distributed to consumers; assigning said gross surcharge pool and bonus stake into quantitative categories: periodically transmitting said category information from a utility center to consumers; storing said category information in each consumer's display processer; optionally receiving data from a calendar-time watt-hour meter located on consumer's premises and processing said data to indicate a consumer's eligiblity for surcharge or bonus distributions and the extent of that eligibility; and displaying all said information to the consumer with red and green lights, green indicating economically advantageous times to use power and red indicating more expensive power, with the number of lights lit and/or their blink duty cycle further quantifying the consumption economics.

Claim 7

A method for simultaneously indicating relative price and bonus-surcharge status using a single set of display lights to provide guidance for the management of electric power consumption by typical consumers, is comprised of the steps of; activating, for a prescribed first time duration, either green lights to indicate below average price conditions or red lights to indicate above average price conditions with the number of red or green lights lit quantifying the extent of the above or below average price; activating, during alternating time periods, simultaneously lights blinking green and red lights, with the number of red lights indicating the estimated size of any surcharge pool, and the number of blinking green lights indicating the estimated bonus stake/KWH that is available; activating an optional third time-shared display using blinking green lights to indicate individual consumer's bonus eligibility or blinking red to indicate surcharge eligibility, and the individual consumer's extent of eligibility being indicated by the duty cycle of the blink, ie. a 25% duty cycle indicating consumer's demand is near a crossover between bonus and surcharge eligibility; and assigning a time duration to the cycling, time-shared display sequences that is long enough for a consumer to easily resolve each parameter yet short enough so that a single glance will, with experience, provide an overview of power consumption economics in order to better prioritize its use.

Claim 8

A method for simultaneously indicating relative price and bonus-surcharge status using a single set of display lights to provide guidance for the management of electric power consumption by typical consumers, is comprised of the steps of; activating, for a prescribed first time duration, either green lights to indicate below average price conditions or red lights to indicate above average price conditions with the number of red or green lights lit quantifying the extent of the above or below average price; activating, during alternating time periods, simultaneously lights blinking green and red lights, with the number of red lights indicating the estimated size of any surcharge pool, and the number of blinking green lights indicating the estimated bonus stake/KWH that is available; activating an optional third time-shared display using blinking green lights to indicate individual consumer's bonus eligibility or blinking red to indicate surcharge eligibility, and the individual consumer's extent of eligibility being indicated by the duty cycle of the blink, ie. a 25% duty cycle indicating consumer's demand is near a crossover between bonus and surcharge eligibility; and assigning a time duration to the cycling, time-shared display sequences that is long enough for a consumer to easily resolve each parameter yet short enough so that a single glance will, with experience, provide an overview of power consumption economics in order to better prioritize its use.