The first action item when receiving the high usage alert should be to think back on whether there may have been any energy consumption anomalies in the past week (one of the days likely to have had high unusual usage). If such an anomaly is identified by the user, subsequent actions will depend on the user’s motivations.
- If the user wants to counteract the high usage day to stabilize their ultimate bill, they can take particular care with energy saving actions for the rest of the billing cycle to mitigate the impacts of high energy consumption. Actions may include turning down the temperature to save on heating, waiting longer before running washer/dryer loads, etc. A user may also be directed to any utility programs for energy savings to help save.
- If a user does not care to save energy for that billing cycle, no action needs to be taken at the time.