At 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 28, residents in West Texas came home from work and turned on their appliances - at precisely the moment when the wind died down in local wind farms. Power plummeted by more than half. The grid neared collapse. So the utilities put in a frantic call to ConsumerPowerline. The company practices "demand response": it pays electricity consumers to turn out the lights when demand is too high. Within seven minutes, ConsumerPowerline instructed several major corporations to turn down their heat and lighting - removing 70 megawatts of demand - and a blackout was narrowly averted.
[go to consumerpowerline news section]