Nest Teams Up With SolarCity On ‘Time Of Savings’ Plan
Nest has announced it is teaming up with SolarCity to add a ‘Time of Savings’ service to its Nest Learning Thermostat.
In an announcement made this week, Nest announced ‘Time of Savings’ — “It’s how Nest will help you make the most of your energy company’s Time of Use plan, without you doing a thing.’
Time of Use is a fairly common, though widely unknown, service offered by electricity utilities, which allows the consumer to save money if they reduce their electricity usage during peak times. However, to do this you need to be aware of your utility’s Time of Use times, and remember to modify your thermostat or other appliances to minimize usage.
“That’s where Time of Savings comes in,” said Ben Bixby, Nest’s Director of Energy Business. “Sign up for the program and your energy company will share your electricity rates with Nest. Then your Nest Learning Thermostat will try to use less electricity when it’s most expensive. Simple.”
Nest’s Time of Savings will allow the Nest Learning Thermostat to begin modifying things as it sees fit. For example, as Nest explains in its announcement, “if your thermostat sees that you like to cool things down at noon, but that’s when electricity prices spike, it might start cooling the house at 11:30 when energy’s still cheap.”
Nest is launching Time of Savings with SolarCity, and is currently working with Southern California Edison and other energy partners to make Time of Savings available to more customers in the future.
“The California Public Utilities Commission has mandated that the state’s major utilities – Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison – move their residential customers to TOU rates by 2019,” said Ben Bixby.
“This means millions of California homes will be billed for energy differently in just a few years. Working with our energy partners, we designed Time of Savings to help customers manage these changing pricing schedules and make it easy for them to use less energy without sacrificing comfort.
“We’re excited that SolarCity is our first partner to offer Time of Savings and Nest is working with regulated energy providers across North America to offer this new service.”
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