As my family and I left this past Friday for a quick weekend trip, I wondered whether my wife had needlessly shut the air conditioning off as she dashed back into our home for a quick snack before departing. I knew it would be a scorcher by October standards in the mid-Atlantic and assumed she knew not to power down the unit. Unfortunately I was wrong. When we returned home on Sunday, I walked inside and was greeted by a heat plume that I’m sure a NASA shuttle would have trouble contending with upon re-entry. I ran upstairs and saw the unit toggled in the off position, but more alarming was the air temperature registered on the thermostat – wait for it..wait for it. 90 degrees Fahrenheit. My wife insisted that we were saving energy by turning it off when we’re not home. Yes – she insisted while wiping gobs of perspiration from her face and from the face of my 2-year old daughter. Though well-intentioned to be sure, I explained to my wife that turning it on and cooling off the entire house would likely create a higher demand in kilowatts and that we could incur higher costs on our bill. It was the higher costs part that grabbed her attention undoubtedly because she serves as the comptroller within our household. She then asked “whether I knew what I knew because the SAP product I manage?” At which point I nodded my head in the affirmative and then told her that SAP Energy and Environmental Intelligence had opened my eyes to the high costs associated with energy consumption across all sectors of business and that it makes you stop and think about your own role as an energy consumer. Pretty sure I had her convinced as soon as I uttered the words ‘higher cost’ – talk about the home being a microcosm for businesses worldwide.
