Curious if anyone here has connected their utility account to OhmConnect and what your experience has been? I had been seeing ads for it popping up in my area for a while and decided to connect our utility account a few weeks ago. The idea is that OhmConnect sends you an alert (up to four times a week for us, 1-2 hours per alert, usually in the 6-9 pm time period) when energy demand in your area is high. You are then supposed to lower your household energy use as much as possible during that time, with a goal of beating your forecasted energy use. The larger goal is to even out power demand and lower the utilities' use of fossil fuels to meet peak power demand. And for the consumer, you potentially shave a bit off your energy bill, always nice for us mustachian types!
It looks like the service/alerts are available to anyone, BUT...if you are a customer of a few particular utilities (the three major ones in California, then also one in Texas and one in Toronto that I am unfamiliar with), you can also get points for using less energy, and the points are redeemable for cash.
We signed up a few weeks ago and our energy use is already fairly low, so I don't expect this to be a huge money maker for us. But I like the idea of having a reminder to "unplug" a few times a week, I'm viewing it as a great opportunity for my husband and I to sit down, chill out, and talk to each other. Overall it seems like an idea that's very in line with mustachian "values" and behavior, reminded me a lot of the post about how
A Peak Life is Lived Off Peak.
Anyone else tried it?