[lesuorac]

> Why is my utility company wasting money on auctioned efficiency data?

If you lower the energy demand on the grid then you lower the price that the grid needs to pay by a lot.

Grids tend to take in bids from power companies of Volume + Price and then pick enough Volume (at the lowest Price first) until they get to the expected Volume and then payout to those winning bidders the Price of the last needed Volume. If you can decrease the Volume then the total price paid by the grid goes down.

If sharing some of that energy savings with another entity it's still a win-win because you're overall paying less.

It's like hiring a tax account where they get paid 50% of whatever taxes they save you. It's a win-win until they start committing tax fraud.