perkWh

perkWh is a proposed informal unit of account used to express the value of energy saved or generated on a per-kilowatt-hour basis. It is not an official unit in the International System of Units and has no standardized definition across jurisdictions. The concept appears in policy discussions and pilot programs as a way to design incentives for energy efficiency, demand response, and distributed energy resources by assigning a per-kWh credit.

In practice, a perkWh would be defined by program rules and could take the form of a monetary credit or a digital token with programmable conditions. The value might be fixed or vary with time of use, location, or program difficulty. For example, a utility or incentive platform could offer 0.05 perkWh for each kWh saved during peak periods, or issue a perkWh for each kWh an eligible rooftop solar system exports within a favorable window. Credits could be applied to future bills, redeemed as rebates, or traded on a marketplace, depending on governance.

The key advantage of the concept is its intuitive framing: customers and investors can relate incentives directly to the amount of energy saved or produced. However, challenges include the lack of standardization, potential confusion with other pricing terms, measurement and verification of savings, and regulatory acceptance. As a concept, perkWh complements existing mechanisms such as net metering, renewable energy certificates, and demand-response payments by providing a per-kWh unit for incentive design. See also kilowatt-hour, demand response, energy credit, carbon credit, time-of-use pricing.