“Particularly, in the middle of a hot day it can really help avoid reliability issues on the grid,” Amann said.Your home air-conditioning system doesn’t work like a water faucet, said Shichao Liu, an architectural engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
“People think, ‘If I make the thermostat set point 60, I’ll get more cooling than a set point at 70,’ but that’s not correct,” Liu said. “You get the same amount of the cooling.”If you set your thermostat to a temperature that exceeds your air conditioner’s capacity, the system will keep running as it tries to cool your home to that point, he said.
“If everybody who is away from home has set their thermostat so that they’re saving at least 5 percent of their cooling, then across all of the houses that can really make a difference in addressing that peak load,” Amann said.