OhmConnect News and Press Releases

In the seemingly never-ending saga of the race to brace for the next extreme weather event to impact the power grid, Texas state Senators unveiled nine bills last Thursday that would restrict renewable energy development and encourage the building of more fossil fuel-burning power plants.

"With its fleet of grid-connected appliances and home devices now surpassing a quarter of a million, OhmConnect, the world's leading residential energy management company, announced its newest collaborators: SunPower Corp., a leading solar technology and energy services provider, and Carrier, the leading global provider of healthy, safe, sustainable and intelligent building and cold chain solutions."

"During last year’s terrible heat wave, OhmConnect’s Resi-Station saved a total of 1 Gigawatts of power, cut down time lost to black-outs by six days, and earned money for the residents and businesses in its network. Imagine what Resi-Station will be able to do with 1 million devices in its network!"

"OhmConnect has pledged to give away up to 1 million smart thermostats over the next few months to combat the risk of summer grid emergencies in California. The move could be seen as a massive public relations gambit, complete with a celebrity endorsement from Kristen Bell and contests between cities to enroll the most customers.

But to OhmConnect CEO Cisco DeVries, it’s also a “commitment of $100 million in clean energy infrastructure in people’s homes” — a rough estimate of how much it will cost to buy the thermostats."

"Really what OhmConnect has done is figure out how to get residential customers to act, essentially, in concert like a symphony, all at once,” the company's CEO Cisco DeVries tells Axios. "To reduce energy demand in really predictable, reliable ways, and so reliably that it allows grid managers to dispatch us, to dispatch connections to our customers, instead of turning on a power plant."

"Cities partnering with the company view it as a way to help ward off rolling blackouts like the ones the state experienced over two days in August. "

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Cisco: "In order to keep the grid stable, we have to turn the power off for neighborhoods and communities. We want to keep that from happening this year and OhmConnect is one of the best ways the state has to keep the lights on for everybody, to keep the power on for everybody, but to reduce energy use."

“We were able to provide a lot of energy savings even in a situation in which we were having a heatwave and the grid was in crisis,” DeVries says. “Fossil fuel power plants were struggling. Some went offline. Transmission lines were failing. OhmConnect showed up, and I think that’s been an important part of proving that we can be even more reliable than fossil fuels.”

“For a large portion of our customers, OhmConnect is the first time they’ve really seen a benefit because of the transition to renewable energy and a smart grid,” says DeVries. “They’re getting paid to participate in the grid in a way that they haven’t had the ability to do. I think it’s really critical that as we build out the next generation of infrastructure to make sure that we’re not leaving anybody behind.”

As people look for ways to save money and avoid debt, OhmConnect offers one solution for residents of California. OhmConnect works with utility companies to learn when the energy grid will be particularly stressed. OhmConnect then asks its users to lower their energy consumption during a specified time [..]

11:47s-11:59s Narrator: "OhmConnect is a company trying to change that. It's gamified saving energy, letting users accumlate points that they can later cash out. Its create a whole business model on paying customer to use less."

"One of the biggest players is Oakland-based OhmConnect, which pays households to use less electricity when the grid is stressed and sells the aggregated savings into energy markets. Last month, the start-up announced a $100-million investment from Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, which was spun out of Google parent company Alphabet Inc.

The bulk of the money will finance Resi-Station, which at 550 megawatts would be the world’s largest virtual power plant."

The distributed clean power plant, Resi-Station, backed by an $80 million SIP commitment, will make California’s power system more sustainable and resilient in response to the pressures of climate change, and deliver millions of dollars in savings to residents.

SIP led OhmConnect’s Series C round, investing $20 million in OhmConnect, a leading residential demand response and energy services technology company that predicts, incentivizes, and coordinates consumer energy savings.

One company that participated in DRAM, but graduated to qualifying as a non-generating participant in California's resource adequacy market, is OhmConnect. The startup pays people for reducing their household consumption at key times, sharing the revenue made from selling that aggregated capacity. OhmConnect eliminated nearly 1 gigawatt-hour of peak demand during the heat wave from August 13 to 20, paying its customers $1 million in the process, said CEO Cisco DeVries.

The extreme heat storms that hit California this August and September stressed our electricity systems in ways our energy planning agencies did not expect or plan for, forcing us to rethink the quantity and type of electric capacity needed to meet customers' demand. The energy challenges caused by climate change require solutions that address near term needs to "keep the lights on," while not worsening an already dire situation by burning more fossil fuel.

Emera Technologies has developed a residential, plug-and-play microgrid system called BlockEnergy that is designed to be owned and operated by utilities – a sector in search of a way to offer microgrids that works within its business structure.

“Enabling appliances to respond in favorable ways to grid conditions, such as deferring a refrigerator’s defrost cycle, could be beneficial if done on a large scale,” she said. Some of those types of reductions did happen during that week in August, OhmConnect Chief Executive Cisco DeVries said in an interview. OhmConnect, which operates in California, Texas, and Toronto, Canada, has 150,000 customers and controls 60,000 devices.

“The wildfires are the ‘hurricanes of California.’ They will come back every year. It is unclear where and when, but our customers are planning for the new normal.” Incentives and very high electric rates bolster the argument for immediate action and justify microgrid planning, said Lohr. And OhmConnect quadrupled the number of new customers during the mid-August heatwaves, said Cisco DeVries, company president. The customers get paid for OhmConnect to control their appliances or home microgrids for load management or to provide power to utilities.

With record-breaking heat this summer and many people working from home, San Diegans may have seen a spike in their energy bill. OhmConnect is a free service helping residents earn cash and save energy.“We’ve seen people’s energy bills increase typically from 10 to 15 percent,” says Curtis Tongue, Co-Founder of OhmConnect.

“The wildfires are the ‘hurricanes of California.’ They will come back every year. It is unclear where and when, but our customers are planning for the new normal.” Incentives and very high electric rates bolster the argument for immediate action and justify microgrid planning, said Lohr. And OhmConnect quadrupled the number of new customers during the mid-August heatwaves, said Cisco DeVries, company president. The customers get paid for OhmConnect to control their appliances or home microgrids for load management or to provide power to utilities.

Just because renters cannot access the full benefits of clean energy doesn’t mean they can’t participate in a decentralized grid. In fact, they can help prevent more scarcity-based outages like the ones that hit California in August.State leaders implored residents to voluntarily cut back on their power during that heat wave (and people complied). But demand response services like OhmConnect pay people to do that.

The proliferation of new technologies has transformed areas of mobility and software into comprehensive service offerings to bolster operations. Now, public sector entities are leading the charge on a tech-driven service offering that's been bubbling under the surface for decades: Energy Efficiency as a Service (EEaaS).

Over Labor Day weekend, when temperatures were soaring, at the request of the California Energy Commission, OhmConnect put out an appeal to its 150,000 active participants throughout California urging them to cut back even more. It normally pays its customers between $15 to $45 a month for their conservation efforts. That weekend, though, it paid members about $300,000. Plus, it sweetened the pot.

The proliferation of new technologies has transformed areas of mobility and software into comprehensive service offerings to bolster operations. Now, public sector entities are leading the charge on a tech-driven service offering that's been bubbling under the surface for decades: Energy Efficiency as a Service (EEaaS).

The company OhmConnect oversees a collection of home microgrids and actually took those private home grids and put their capacity to the grid, creating an additional 220 MWh of capacity to the struggling centralized power grid in California. OhmConnect paid customers $300,000 in a single day, according to Microgrid Knowledge, for their portion of the capacity the company provided to the larger grid.

OhmConnect is a private aggregator of customer-sited DR. Its 150,000 California customers answered calls over 200 days in 2019 and at times reduced state peak demand over 150 MW, OhmConnect CEO Cisco DeVries said. "Our aggregations of nearly 60,000 devices and appliances, including thermostats, batteries and home car chargers are bid into the CAISO market 10,000 times a day, like small power plants on standby all over the state," he said.

California’s distributed energy resources add up to gigawatts' worth of capacity that could be used to prevent future rolling blackouts and balance the state’s increasingly clean-powered grid — if the state can compensate them for those services.

If you’re like me you are always look for ways to trim the utility bills you have options. California residents can sign up for OhmConnect, which sends you notifications to turn off your appliances for an hour each day. If you reduce your usage enough, OhmConnect will give you points that you can accumulate to earn cash.

“We reduced over 200 MW of load on August 14 and 18, almost 200 MW on August 17, and almost 1 GWh of total energy usage from August 13-20,” CEO Cisco DeVries said. “That is equivalent to taking over 600,000 homes offline for an hour.”

Flexibility is not a new concept. Utilities have had limited “demand response” programs, which ask customers to flex their energy use, for years. Most common are air conditioning programs, in which customers allow the utility to cycle off their air conditioner for a fraction of each hour using a radio control. In aggregate, these programs can reduce total demand in a way that customers barely notice. [...] programs, such as those run by third parties like OhmConnect, target residential users. In a recent survey of utilities by the Smart Electric Power Alliance, 50 percent of utilities responded that they were interested in implementing demand response programs, 20 percent are currently planning to implement demand response programs, and just 5 percent have implemented programs

[...] A common mistake? Blasting your air conditioner as soon as you get home. This makes it work harder, hiking up the bill. Instead try investing in a smart thermostat, which can cost around $170, but usually pays for itself in the first year. Like with a regular thermostat, you set it to the ideal temperatures during specific time periods, but it monitors your energy use and behavior and automatically adjusts settings to make energy use as efficient as possible, saving you an average of 15 percent on cooling (nearly $145 annually) and 12 percent on heating in the winter..

Depending on whom you ask, California is a leader in clean energy or a cautionary tale. Power outages in August prompted stern critiques from Republicans. “In California”, Donald Trump tweeted, “Democrats have intentionally implemented rolling blackouts—forcing Americans in the dark.” In addition to provoking outrage and derision, however, the episode is also likely to inspire investment.

Amid record heat and wildfires, rolling blackouts affected millions of Californians last week. But millions more low-income households in California and nationwide face loss of service for a different reason. Their electric bills have gone up in the pandemic, and they can't pay them. Utilities want to collect, and are demanding an end to moratoria on shut-offs

A network of home microgrids and networked home appliances controlled by OhmConnect on August 15 provided 220 MWh to the grid as a generating resource, said Cisco DeVries, CEO of OhmConnect, which operates a network of microgrids and a virtual power plant.

The heat wave has many families running air conditioning non-stop, but there are steps you can take to help lower your bill."What families need to realize is there are strategies to save," said Andrea Woroch, money saving expert

OhmConnect paid out more than $300,000 to its California residential demand response users when temperatures soared last Friday, a day in which the company’s virtual power plant supplied more than 200 MWh to California’s grid by harnessing the power of its fleet of energy-saving homes and smart devices across the state.

Instead of making more electricity, one option is to simply reduce demand on hot days. The state already has voluntary programs where homeowners and large commercial and industrial facilities pay lower electricity rates, in exchange for agreeing to reduce their power use on very hot days. Private companies, like OhmConnect, also enroll homeowners to reduce their use on demand.

OhmConnect, California's leading residential clean energy program, supported California Independent System Operator's (CAISO) Flex Alert by incentivizing decreased home energy usage on Friday. In just one day, OhmConnect awarded over $300,000 to its active users.

Scorching heat across the Western United States has left California scrambling to avoid rolling blackouts, as air conditioners send electricity use soaring. Some people blame the power outages on California's reliance on solar power, which drops off when the sun sets. But energy experts say state officials failed to prepare adequately for high temperatures, despite the fact that California's own scientists and regulators have warned that that increasingly common heat waves driven by climate change would stress the electricity grid.

We know that green energy is good, but can there be too much of a good thing? For instance, with unusually low demand during the COVID-19 lockdown, the United Kingdom's power consumption fell by nearly 20 percent this summer. That caused a surge in unused green energy. In May, the National Grid asked for emergency powers to switch off solar and wind farms and warned of blackouts and a "significant risk of disruption to security of supply.

OhmConnect operates a fleet comprising 150,000 residential customers in California, to whom it sends notices to reduce usage at key times. The company also controls 50,000 home devices in the state, which it can cycle on and off remotely. Collectively, the startup can deliver 150 megawatts of peak capacity to CAISO by eliminating consumption, DeVries said.

Cisco DeVries is the CEO of OhmConnect,a former White House aide to the US Secretary of Energy, and creator of theaward-winning property assessed clean energy program (PACE). OhmConnect isbringing energy use to the forefront of people’s minds, aiming to makeCalifornia 100 percent reliant on renewable energy through the company’s newdemand response model. The easiest, most effective way to do that is throughthe utilisation of smart devices that automatically make homes grid-responsive.This in turn will also stabilise California’s brittle grid, while automatingenergy savings for California residents and changing how energy is used acrossthe state. This is the future of demand response and it will make 100 percentreliance on renewables a reality.

It’s not just that we’re staying home more—and using more electricity when we do—but also that electricity pries are expected tcrease by 2.8 percent between 2020 and 2021, reports Statista. “Residents of states with the one-two punch of high summer air conditioning needs and higher average electricity prices are going to get the worst of it,” says Cisco DeVries, energy expert, former White House aide and CEO of .

If you live in an area that tends to have low humidity, you may want to consider evaporative coolers, window units that remove heat from the environment by using water evaporation to create cool air, says Cisco DeVries, an energy expert, former aide to the U.S. Secretary of Energy during the Clinton Administration and CEO of OhmConnect.

Energy bills in much of America “will be much, much higher,” said Cisco DeVries, a former White House aide and the CEO of OhmConnect, a company that helps households manage power demand. “With sheltering in place, people aren’t leaving their homes to seek air-conditioned refuge elsewhere, so they will be heavily reliant on their units to cool down their homes.”

In the United States, this summer has already proved usually hot. Now a long-lasting and potentially record-setting heat wave is expected to settle over much of the southwestern U.S. this weekend before spreading to the rest of the country, according to official forecasts.

Energy bills in much of America “will be much, much higher,” said Cisco DeVries, a former White House aide and the CEO of OhmConnect, a company that helps households manage power demand. “With sheltering in place, people aren’t leaving their homes to seek air-conditioned refuge elsewhere, so they will be heavily reliant on their units to cool down their homes.”

Coronavirus shutdowns have countless Americans spending more time at home than ever these days, and as the summer heat sets in, that means keeping air conditioners running for hours on end in a bid to stay cool. Unfortunately, battling the heat often comes at a staggeringly high cost; according to the US Energy Information Administration, air conditioning typically accounts for 12 percent of home energy costs - or about $265 on average.

Coronavirus shutdowns have countless Americans spending more time at home than ever these days, and as the summer heat sets in, that means keeping air conditioners running for hours on end in a bid to stay cool. Unfortunately, battling the heat often comes at a staggeringly high cost; according to the US Energy Information Administration, air conditioning typically accounts for 12 percent of home energy costs - or about $265 on average.

I applaud the House Select committee on their action plan to tackle the climate crisis. It is our moral imperative to address and resolve this crisis as rapidly as possible, and this plan promises to do so while also tackling urgent economic and health objectives. We have to think big, and we do not have the luxury of focusing on just one crisis at a time. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, the plan is a 'bold step for climate action now.

OhmConnect is a smart-grid startup that takes a different, tech-driven approach to balance power supply and demand. The service works like this. Utilities like California's PGE pay OhmConnect to reduce power consumption during specific times, which are identified in advance using predictive analytics. The company then (150,000 as of Summer 2019), who give it access to the web-connected smart electrical meters than many utilities have already installed in their homes.

Just because you turned the device off, doesn’t necessarily mean it stops using electricity,” says Cisco DeVries, CEO of. “Things like cable boxes, game consoles, microwaves, coffee makers, space heaters, phone chargers, and even powered toothbrushes can all continue to draw electricity when turned off.”

OhmConnect, a leading clean energy company, today announcedAutoOhms, a program that manages energy use for California residents whendemand is high and prices surge.

If you live in California or Texas, OhmConnect is another company that will pay you for cutting your energy usage during “peak” hours (usually weeknights), aka when energy demand is at its highest throughout the day.

"Based on our data, we've seen power surge about 12 percent since Coronavirus hit. We've seen pockets in the Central Valley where it's even higher. Across California if those persist, we predict customers might be on the hook for $1 billion and additional energy costs," said Curtis Tongue, OhmConnect Co-Founder.

No matter how cognizant we are of our spending habits, we're still stuck with the dreaded bills — and those bills can be particularly daunting now as millions of Americans are faced with job losses and other financial challenges in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week, OhmConnect announced AutoOhms, its newest program that offers cash incentives for "timely, smarter energy use."AutoOhm will power down energy-intensive connected appliances in 15-minute increments during peak energy times. Customers will receive a text message when peak rates are about to kick in and can select appliances to power down through an app. Through this "gamified" experience, the customer can actively see their energy savings.

Clean energy company OhmConnect nveiled , a program that manages energy use for California residents when demand is high and prices surge.OhmConnect incentivizes timely, smarter energy use through cash payments to consumers. It is now offering AutoOhms as another way to get paid for saving energy.  By connecting devices, like smart thermostats and plugs, an AutoOhm will power down energy-intensive appliances in 15-minute increments and residents will earn money without lifting a finger.

Demand response program uses gamification, targets peaks -- OhmConnect, a leading clean energy company, announced yesterday a program that manages energy use for...

Americans put down a lot of dough for their energy bills; the average household spends about $2,060 annually. Fortunately, there are plenty of — from unplugging devices completely to installing energy-efficient light bulbs to using programmable thermostats and electrical timers to washing your dishes and clothes in full loads during off-peak hours to getting paid to save energy through the app to simply double-checking your bills — that can help lower your utility costs year-round.

The residential aggregators that could be in a position to help bring flexible capacity to market this summer include AutoGrid, OhmConnect, Chai Energy, EnergyHub, Uplight and Sunrun, as well as newer entities such as Leap that are bringing a platform-provider approach to demand response aggregation.

Cisco DeVries, an energy expert and CEO of OhmConnect, a San Francisco–based company that’s dedicated to helping people rethink how they use their appliances, knows a thing or two about living in an energy-efficient space. To help, he’s sharing his expert tips for keeping down your bottom line during quarantine. (It’s not as difficult as you’d think.)

In case you didn't get the memo, sustainable living is here to stay. Nowadays, it's impossible to ignore all the studies that show how certain chemicals, materials, and products can affect your home and your health. Fortunately, many companies have risen to the occasion and created eco-friendly alternatives to some of our favorite household items.

This segment aired on the KTLA 5 Morning News on April 27, 2020. Video can be found when following the link above.

Energy Central's Podcast Series - Listen to the podcast for all details

We could all use a few energy-saving reminders right now. After all, thanks to quarantine and the shelter-in-place rules, most of us are at home now more than ever before. As a result, we are likely using up far more home energy than we did just a few short months ago. Nevertheless, even while home on quarantine, there are a lot of small things that we can do to reduce energy waste...

This may seem like an oddly specific request. But, as energy expert and CEO of OhmConnect Cisco DeVries explains, "during peak energy times like 6 p.m., utilities respond to the surge in demand by firing up inefficient—read: CO2 intensive—auxiliary 'peaker' plants, passing this cost onto consumers."

This may seem like an oddly specific request. But, as energy expert and CEO of OhmConnect Cisco DeVries explains, "during peak energy times like 6 p.m., utilities respond to the surge in demand by firing up inefficient—read: CO2 intensive—auxiliary 'peaker' plants, passing this cost onto consumers."

This may seem like an oddly specific request. But, as energy expert and CEO of OhmConnect Cisco DeVries explains, "during peak energy times like 6 p.m., utilities respond to the surge in demand by firing up inefficient—read: CO2 intensive—auxiliary 'peaker' plants, passing this cost onto consumers."

Andrea Woroch, Money-Saving Expert, joined 17 News at Sunrise to share how consumers can save money on monthly expenses and more...

News 8's Heather Myers spoke to a money saving and consumer expert. She shared dozens of ways you can make money right now, from your home...

Energy Central's Podcast Series - Listen to the podcast for all details

This week on the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast, we dive into the world of on demand load shifting and the business model it supports outside of the utility space. The most typical load management strategies in the utility space involve large customers in the commercial and industrial sectors, but Matt Duesterberg and his fellow Co-Founders realized that, in aggregate, residential customers could make a huge impact as well...

We asked 20 green enthusiasts for their top picks on how to make your home energy efficient. Have you ever wondered how small changes in each home can lead to a big impact on the environment?...

Wouldn't it be nice if money grew on trees? Although you'll never find dollar bills sprouting from your favorite oak tree, you can uncover money in other places. By spending some time dissecting your spending habits and scrutinizing your expenses, you could free up money in your budget and save big – up to $5,000 in a year...

A Power outage occurred and was restored earlier today in Southern Humboldt and affected about one thousand three hundred customers. Some Humboldt County residents are saving energy and getting paid through OhmConnect. KMUD's Tanya Horlick reports...

People have realized that they can take control of their energy in lots of other ways. With their smart devices and a little bit of planning, consumers can now make money on their energy use, while simultaneously keeping the grid stable.

If you’re not supposed to swim against a riptide, is there a better, smarter way to paddle out of this predicament? Changing consumer behavior is tricky, in part because our brains are on autopilot a lot of the time ...

It's lights off at Christina Garcia's northwest Fresno home. She's just one of 60,000 Fresno residents who's using OhmConnect, a web site, to get paid for saving electricity. [...] Garcia has earned money weekly, but recently her choices turned into big cash for her. She won energy for life...

The Clean Power, Smart Power bill, introduced in California by state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), was signed into law last week, mandating manufacturers to begin making smart appliances. [...] The bill moved forward with help from OhmConnect, developer of a simple, effective energy saving service that has helped 500,000 California consumers save over 2 million kilowatt-hours of dirty energy to date...

OhmConnect, the leading clean energy program for Californians, today announced the company has improved its residential energy-saving service, expanded its offerings, and increased its customer base to more than 500,000 customer signups. It has also named Cisco DeVries as CEO to take it to the next milestone goal: one million Californians actively engaged in saving energy, reducing the use of fossil fuels, and receiving an average of $300-$500 a year in return...

The San Francisco-based OhmConnect bridges the gap between consumers and the energy sector by paying users to cut their electricity use during high demand times and shifting use to low demand times. Doing so improves resiliency on the electric grid...

Many energy consumers in California, Texas, and Toronto are in luck: OhmConnect is a free service that notifies users during peak electricity consumption hours, keeping the peaker plants off and paying users for the energy they save...

In just-released 2018 energy use rankings, three local cities have been named as three of the top ten most-conserving communities in the state, according to a new Power Use survey from OhmConnect...

Since governments haven’t done a great deal - global carbon emissions are still increasing - perhaps private industry can facilitate people stepping in themselves.

OhmConnect announced that the company has concluded its first-ever MEGA Summer campaign, awarding more than $2.5 million to California residents in just three months for saving energy at critical energy-heavy usage times...

While many people in San Diego saw their energy bills skyrocket over the summer, some others were able to turn the heat into an advantage ...

A “Works With Nest” partnership targets PG&E territory to scale up the company’s unusual approach to third-party residential demand response.

Saving energy helps you save money on your utility bills. In California, it can help you make money too. The state increasingly relies on clean power. But there are still times when demand for energy is so high that ...

When a single homeowner decides to turn off her TV in the evening, the action barely registers on the electric grid. It’s one appliance in one home, out of millions. But when thousands of homeowners turn off their TVs...

Last week, San Diego Gas & Electric announced a first-of-its-kind contract for behavioral demand response -- a deal with Ohmconnect for 4.5 megawatts of energy flexibility, available within 20 minutes notice...

A new company is doing more than just monitoring electricity use. It's making tracking your electrical data fun. Steve Reed of San Diego says he signed up for free with OhmConnect. He was eager to see ...

California’s groundbreaking test of distributed energy resources (DERs) as aggregated grid assets continues -- and this time, the rewards and the responsibilities are even greater...

Could you unplug for one hour? No TV. No computer. Nothing.It might sound ridiculous, but many of us spend our entire day in front of a screen and studies show we’re suffering as a result.

Not many people would be opposed to saving money especially when it’s as easy as flipping a light switch.That’s basically all California residents have to do to earn up to $300 a year for reducing their electricity usage. According to The Penny Hoarder...

The Sierra Club and OhmConnect announced a partnership on February 16th that offsets energy customers in several parts of California...

Schneider Electric and OhmConnect are teaming up on an innovative demand response program that will allow residences to be aggregated and bid into the California ISO market without any connection to a utility...

Now a new pilot project being conducted by grid giant Schneider Electric and startup Ohmconnect is seeking to overcome these barriers. Under the pilot, customers of California’s big three utilities can apply...

Remember the 1990s visions of the future? Those first incantations of the sweeping “smart city,” so technologically utopian and Tomorrowland-ish in design? The concept and solutions were pitched by tech titans like IBM and Cisco...

As people around the world celebrate Earth Day on April 22, there is a growing number of people in California earning money for the energy they’re saving on almost any given day.

There’s no shortage of apps and smart thermostats out there to help you figure out your energy use and cut wasteful consumption. But what if you can do that and raise money for a good cause?

Last year, we covered how California utility regulators and grid operators are rewriting the rules for demand response -- the practice of reducing energy use in homes and businesses to meet grid needs...That’s also the opportunity being targeted by Ohmconnect, the San Francisco-based startup that’s aggregated several thousand households in PG&E territory into its energy efficiency and demand management platform.

Maybe you've heard of smart homes, where devices and appliances are connected so they can "talk" to each other. Well, they're getting smarter, and greener. Imagine: it's around 6pm, and people are arriving home from work. Everybody turns on their lights, stoves, and heating or air conditioning all at once, placing demand on the grid...

Maybe you've heard of smart homes, where devices and appliances are connected so they can "talk" to each other. Well, they're getting smarter, and greener. Imagine: it's around 6pm, and people are arriving home from work. Everybody turns on their lights, stoves, and heating or air conditioning all at once, placing demand on the grid...

Ohmconnect’s CMO and co-founder Curtis Tongue was drawn to energy after starting his career in advertising and design. He combined his consumer engagement background with his co-founder Matt Duesterberg’s deep understanding of electricity markets...

I am most excited about a concept called OhmConnect (OhmConnect.com). It’s a great example of how a startup can solve a major inefficiency in an existing market...

In the United States, power suppliers underestimate electricity consumption around 1% of the time, which means they have to switch on ‘peaker plants’ – generally natural gas-fired turbines, plus some oil-fired equipment – which are run only to meet peak demand...

Ohmconnect is a web service that helps consumers reduce their electricity demand during peak hours. Using a program called Ohmhour, Ohmconnect actually pays energy consumers for reducing their energy usage. In his pitch, Duesterberg told a story of a woman...

Today's call-ahead, manual demand response programs are better than nothing, but a far cry from the automated demand response we should have. Only when the system talks directly to smart thermostats and smart devices can we get the split-second response...

Ohmconnect alerts you when dirty, expensive power plants switch on nearby and pays you for reducing your electricity use...

Ohmconnect alerts you when dirty, expensive power plants switch on nearby and pays you for reducing your electricity use...

Ohmconnect helps manage the city’s power needs by paying people to reduce their electricity use so that the most inefficient power plants don’t have to supply more power....

Integrating IoT with the smart grid enables new market and grid services not possible in the past. By coordinating a fleet of smart devices, Ohmconnect has built virtual power plants that bid into energy markets as actual generation.

Ohmconnect is the platform that pays you to save on your own electricity bills.  You heard that correctly: they pay you to save money! Taking advantage of the IoT...

When the electric grid can't meet demand—perhaps because you've been running the A/C too long, or a wind farm isn't performing fully—managers turn to "peaker" stations...

It might be hard to wrap your head around, but a Bay Area company is aiming to turn your home into a "virtual powerplant" -- no solar panels required. San Francisco-based Ohmconnect has created an online service to help people cash in...

That’s the central question behind many cleantech industry players and that’s why the Department of Energy launched the American Energy Data Challenge. We interviewed...

Make money by turning down your electricity usage during peak hours. That’s the pitch fromOhmconnect. The service alerts you when the power grid is under strain. When that happens...

For all the emphasis placed on clean energy, you might expect that a significant dent’s been made in humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions — emissions that are directly linked to warming temperatures on Earth, according to the overwhelming majority of climate scientists....

After a combination of federal and state initiatives, as well as a far-reaching rollout of smart meters, home energy data in California has finally emerged as a platform for innovation and entrepreneurs. New startups working with energy data...