I did not read "standard temperature" to mean "a thing that I manually adjust twice per day on a fixed schedule" but rather "I set it 2ºF colder in April and leave it that way until November".

If you are willing to make 60 thermostat adjustments per month at 42¢ each, you earned that $25 in my book.

Energy savings events in my area are rare - only a few days of the year and very predictable (usually on a "hot" day). It's not a burden.

Prior to this program, the local utility company would merely announce the hours of peak events, and recommend minimizing energy usage as much as you can tolerate. They'd calculate how much less energy you used, and give a credit commensurate to that amount. I used to just chill at a nearby library during those hours (no kids in those days).

With this program, all they do is check that I participated often enough to exceed a threshold, and I get a fixed rebate (regardless of how much I exceed the threshold). And I effectively get that rebate by not saving any energy, and with little effort on my part.

It's silly.