Off Old Farm Road in Chilmark at the end of a dirt road sits the new house of Dardanella and Sean Slavin and their two small children. Over the past year this house has become a home for the young family but it has also become a laboratory. Here, and in 32 other houses across the Island, General Electric and the Vineyard Energy Project have been testing out the next generation of so-called smart appliances and gauging the response of customers whose energy demands have been tempered by the energy load capacity of utilities.

The Vineyard is among a handful of places in America selected as part of a pilot study involving new “smart grid” appliances which take advantage of cheaper off-peak electricity.

The Vineyard Energy Project (VEP) has been awarded almost $800,000 to be part of the project, which will be carried out in association with General Electric, and which will see 50 Island homes fitted out with new smart appliances, able to be remotely controlled to take advantage of times when demand for power is lower and it is therefore cheaper.