Since many of the solar enthusiasts here also into energy conservation as an effective pre-cursor before adopting solar, has anyone here been using OhmConnect for further savings and energy tracking? I just discovered it about a month ago, and there are some pertinent observations wrt solar users, so I thought I'd share my experience so far. Note right now this only applies to electricity consumers (solar or non-solar) in California in PG&E, SCE, or SDGE territories.
OhmConnect is a startup that's made arrangements with the utilities for consumer demand-shaving during certain periods. It's analogous to some of the peak programs from the utilities themselves, SmartDays et al, except quite a number of those exclude solar net-metering customers, while OhmConnect is available to solar customers. But the big difference is rather than targeting large blocks of hours or days, OhmConnect focuses on these very short periods, about an hour a week, where the wholesale spot price of electricity can jump by 100X or so when the uiltities need to turn on small peaker plants that are very costly to activate and run. By demand-shaving, it achieves the same net effect as providing more incremental generation to the grid, and those savings are passed to OhmConnect users. Each of these short periods is called an OhmHour, and you're notified in advance- sometimes minutes, sometimes a day, so that you can curtail demand, and they can connect with some smarthome automation to automate that for you.
I've done about three of these OhmHours over the past few weeks, and here's some notes I found interesting and relevant to solar users. Would love to hear from others here who have already been using this for a while as well.
1. It can work with solar because they can work with negative net consumption (i.e. net generation). They merely take your average net consumption as measured by your utility, whether positive or negative, over the previous ten days as a baseline, so if your conserve during an OhmHour, you'll go even more negative, and still record a net reduction in usage that can be rewarded. However, as we all love to pore over our daily generation, we know that our generation fluctatues on a daily basis due to temperature, clouds, whatever. So there is the chance that you conserve during an OhmHour, but your solar panels don't produce and you end up with MORE consumption than your baseline despite your best efforts. On average though, it seems to even out so far. But if you anticipate an unusually cloudy day during an OhmHour, you can always opt out of one.
2. Despite OhmConnect being able to work with negative consumption (net generation) from your utility, there do seem to be some forum reports of negative values being treated as positive (i.e. as net consumption) and not being rewarded properly. So there could be some bugs. Since most OhmHours are in the late afternoon and I have afternoon panel shading, my baseline and actual consumption have always been positive so far, so I've not had firsthand experience with this issue.
3. Since many of the solar users here take aggressive conservation steps to reduce peak afternoon usage, like me you may not have much load to conserve even further. My afternoon load is typically about 0.5 kw, so I can shave about 0.1-0.2 kwh in an OhmHour at best. But I'm in it more for the fun of conservation than the actual rewards. Now if you live in a hot climate with AC, you will probably see a big effect up to 1-5 kwh by shutting down your AC, and can gain some sizeable rewards.
4. Now here's the most interesting thing is the actual reward rates. These are not necessarily the same as the Cal ISO spot market rate (those purported 100X jumps, but rather what OhmConnect chooses to pass through to consumers, but I assume there's some correlation. And so first, it does seems to vary quite a bit between days, and even between utility regions, according to user discussions, and I suspect some is tied to variability in spot rates.
5. But second, the actual rewards rates I've seen so far are in the $2.50 to $6 per kwh. Now I'm only saving about 0.1-0.3 kwh each time, so my rewards can be less than a dollar, but if you're a big conserver, you could see $10 or more from just one. I'm not sure if the formulas are linear though. And again, others have experienced reward rates much less than $1/kwh, esp reports out of SoCal; some have gotten much higher than I've seen. Regardless though, these reward rates are far higher than even the peak kwh rates the utilities are charging us for a peak kwh, so here's a way to get back and "stick it to the man"; since the utilities are allegedly paying OhmConnect to reward you.
6. Since this doesn't tie into your utility bill at all, the reward is on top of whatever savings from conserving on your utility bill ($0.25-$0.40 or whatever your peak TOU rate is). Now with utilities now implementing min connection charges and such, if you're already under the minimums, you won't save on your utility bill at true-up. But you'll get rewards from OhmConnect. I view it indirectly as my clawback of my $120 PG&E minimum.
7. Now on to the smarthome automation. They've got some integration with thermostats like Ecobee and smartplugs to turn on and off during the OhmHour, so you don't have to be home to manually turn things on/off. Mostly they integrate by you giving your login and password to those smart apps though, not through some backend API or permission, so some feel that giving your password to you thermostat to this startup is dangerous. But it's all opt-in, you don't have to do it.
8. They support two brands of smartplugs so far, and the TP-Link smartplug I've got appears to work flawlessly with OhmConnect. The Wiser plugs have some reports of problems, and some smarthome integrations they have rely on the start/stop SMS notifications they send at the beginning and end of the hour, and so some have reported things not turning off, or on, which could lead to disastrous results. I only have a non-critical Tivo and home entertainment center plugged into the TP-Link, so nothing bad could happen like a fridge full of spoiled food. Plus the TP-Links seem to have a more reliable integration approach. Best thing is though I'm only saving about 0.1 kwh with this smartplug, they also reward $0.50 per OhmHour for smarthome integration, so I may make $25 over the year to cover the cost of the smartplug itself.
9. Thermostat integration is crude; only turns cooling on and off, rather than changing to a higher setpoint. But it does seem to work reliably with my Ecobee, though I don't generally use AC in the afternoons anyway.
I formed a team called SolarPanelTalk within OhmConnect, as it'd be fun to track with other folks here actual kwh and dollar savings. There's also a signup bonus of $20 for new users; also a referral bonus as well, but I'm not posting because of that, so if you want my referral URL you can PM me, but otherwise just go to ohmconnect.com and sign up. Also on 8/9 they just doubled the bonuses to $40 for SCE territory in particular, something about the Aliso Canyon gas field shutdown impacting peaker plants and more incentives from SCE for demand-shaving.
(I think if you go through my referral you get added to the SolarPanelTalk team directly, but you can also search by team name and add yourself, or change teams anytime.)
OhmConnect is a startup that's made arrangements with the utilities for consumer demand-shaving during certain periods. It's analogous to some of the peak programs from the utilities themselves, SmartDays et al, except quite a number of those exclude solar net-metering customers, while OhmConnect is available to solar customers. But the big difference is rather than targeting large blocks of hours or days, OhmConnect focuses on these very short periods, about an hour a week, where the wholesale spot price of electricity can jump by 100X or so when the uiltities need to turn on small peaker plants that are very costly to activate and run. By demand-shaving, it achieves the same net effect as providing more incremental generation to the grid, and those savings are passed to OhmConnect users. Each of these short periods is called an OhmHour, and you're notified in advance- sometimes minutes, sometimes a day, so that you can curtail demand, and they can connect with some smarthome automation to automate that for you.
I've done about three of these OhmHours over the past few weeks, and here's some notes I found interesting and relevant to solar users. Would love to hear from others here who have already been using this for a while as well.
1. It can work with solar because they can work with negative net consumption (i.e. net generation). They merely take your average net consumption as measured by your utility, whether positive or negative, over the previous ten days as a baseline, so if your conserve during an OhmHour, you'll go even more negative, and still record a net reduction in usage that can be rewarded. However, as we all love to pore over our daily generation, we know that our generation fluctatues on a daily basis due to temperature, clouds, whatever. So there is the chance that you conserve during an OhmHour, but your solar panels don't produce and you end up with MORE consumption than your baseline despite your best efforts. On average though, it seems to even out so far. But if you anticipate an unusually cloudy day during an OhmHour, you can always opt out of one.
2. Despite OhmConnect being able to work with negative consumption (net generation) from your utility, there do seem to be some forum reports of negative values being treated as positive (i.e. as net consumption) and not being rewarded properly. So there could be some bugs. Since most OhmHours are in the late afternoon and I have afternoon panel shading, my baseline and actual consumption have always been positive so far, so I've not had firsthand experience with this issue.
3. Since many of the solar users here take aggressive conservation steps to reduce peak afternoon usage, like me you may not have much load to conserve even further. My afternoon load is typically about 0.5 kw, so I can shave about 0.1-0.2 kwh in an OhmHour at best. But I'm in it more for the fun of conservation than the actual rewards. Now if you live in a hot climate with AC, you will probably see a big effect up to 1-5 kwh by shutting down your AC, and can gain some sizeable rewards.
4. Now here's the most interesting thing is the actual reward rates. These are not necessarily the same as the Cal ISO spot market rate (those purported 100X jumps, but rather what OhmConnect chooses to pass through to consumers, but I assume there's some correlation. And so first, it does seems to vary quite a bit between days, and even between utility regions, according to user discussions, and I suspect some is tied to variability in spot rates.
5. But second, the actual rewards rates I've seen so far are in the $2.50 to $6 per kwh. Now I'm only saving about 0.1-0.3 kwh each time, so my rewards can be less than a dollar, but if you're a big conserver, you could see $10 or more from just one. I'm not sure if the formulas are linear though. And again, others have experienced reward rates much less than $1/kwh, esp reports out of SoCal; some have gotten much higher than I've seen. Regardless though, these reward rates are far higher than even the peak kwh rates the utilities are charging us for a peak kwh, so here's a way to get back and "stick it to the man"; since the utilities are allegedly paying OhmConnect to reward you.
6. Since this doesn't tie into your utility bill at all, the reward is on top of whatever savings from conserving on your utility bill ($0.25-$0.40 or whatever your peak TOU rate is). Now with utilities now implementing min connection charges and such, if you're already under the minimums, you won't save on your utility bill at true-up. But you'll get rewards from OhmConnect. I view it indirectly as my clawback of my $120 PG&E minimum.
7. Now on to the smarthome automation. They've got some integration with thermostats like Ecobee and smartplugs to turn on and off during the OhmHour, so you don't have to be home to manually turn things on/off. Mostly they integrate by you giving your login and password to those smart apps though, not through some backend API or permission, so some feel that giving your password to you thermostat to this startup is dangerous. But it's all opt-in, you don't have to do it.
8. They support two brands of smartplugs so far, and the TP-Link smartplug I've got appears to work flawlessly with OhmConnect. The Wiser plugs have some reports of problems, and some smarthome integrations they have rely on the start/stop SMS notifications they send at the beginning and end of the hour, and so some have reported things not turning off, or on, which could lead to disastrous results. I only have a non-critical Tivo and home entertainment center plugged into the TP-Link, so nothing bad could happen like a fridge full of spoiled food. Plus the TP-Links seem to have a more reliable integration approach. Best thing is though I'm only saving about 0.1 kwh with this smartplug, they also reward $0.50 per OhmHour for smarthome integration, so I may make $25 over the year to cover the cost of the smartplug itself.
9. Thermostat integration is crude; only turns cooling on and off, rather than changing to a higher setpoint. But it does seem to work reliably with my Ecobee, though I don't generally use AC in the afternoons anyway.
I formed a team called SolarPanelTalk within OhmConnect, as it'd be fun to track with other folks here actual kwh and dollar savings. There's also a signup bonus of $20 for new users; also a referral bonus as well, but I'm not posting because of that, so if you want my referral URL you can PM me, but otherwise just go to ohmconnect.com and sign up. Also on 8/9 they just doubled the bonuses to $40 for SCE territory in particular, something about the Aliso Canyon gas field shutdown impacting peaker plants and more incentives from SCE for demand-shaving.
(I think if you go through my referral you get added to the SolarPanelTalk team directly, but you can also search by team name and add yourself, or change teams anytime.)
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