Eversource ConnectedSolutions for Tesla Owners

[ScoGold]

I stumbled upon this on Eversource’s website. There is a program that gives incentives to Tesla owners to track their energy consumption when charging at home and it’s impact on the grid.

I tried to apply but it has reached its capacity for my area in MA.

I’m curious if anyone on here was able to sign up and how it has paid out over time?

ConnectedSolutions for Tesla Owners

www.eversource.com

 

[Tdreamer]

I signed up in April and received the initial $50 incentive payout. I've not received anything since that I'm aware of - probably due to my charging by mistake during the peak times which disqualifies you for that months payment if I recall correctly. An example of that charging was when I went to the office for the first time in a year, and took advantage of the free L2 charging they had there. Since I did it during peak use hours, that was noted on the account as a disqualifying charge event for the program, even though it was free to me to charge.

The program requires you to sign in to your Tesla account on your Fleetcarma account so they can pull charging data from Tesla servers. Very simple to setup.

As you can see from this month's dashboard screen capture, I don't drive/charge much these days.

 

[ScoGold]

Thanks for the detail Tdreamer. I didn’t realize that you needed to be exclusively charging during non-peak hours for the full month. Being reimbursed at $0.05/kWh makes this payback not really worth it, other than just getting free money.

In your example you would get $6.75 if you charged exclusively during non-peak for this 135 kWh month.

 

[Tdreamer]

Agreed on the value returned for participating. When I signed up a few months ago the signup process was clear this was a beta program with limited openings. I assume that if the technology in use meets their goals, and beta participants show behavior improvement to charge off-peak they'll expand it at some point.

 

[Tdreamer]

I should note that supercharging sessions appear to be excluded from their dataset - only L1/L2 charging is listed. Last month's dashboard illustrates this quite clearly. I was on a 3 week cross-country road trip from 5/7 to 5/30 and none of the charging (but all of the consumption - 5235.9 kWh) is shown. My previous screenshot also shows no charging on 6/15 when I shot out to Charlton, MA to hit the two new superchargers as they were being commissioned. Those might not show up anyway since the sites may not have been fully registered on the Tesla servers yet though.

 

[adspguy]

Eversource also has a program where they offer you $50 to allow them to just gather your info but not have any incentives paid. I didn't sign up because I didn't really want to link my tesla account info to that program.

I received an invite to join that program because I have my home charger signed up for their connectedsolutions program where they have events where they limit the charging rate on my chargepoint home charger. For that program I got a flat $300 payment upfront to let them have chargepoint charger access for 3 years.

Seems like there are quite a few different connectedsolutions things going on, seemingly as trial programs.

 

[ScoGold]

Contemplating upgrading my garage outlets for L2 charging. Seems like although the Tesla wall connector is less expensive, all the incentive programs are available for the ChargePoint charger.

Curious what others are using at home to charge

 

[adspguy]

We have 3 ev's parked in my garage, my model S and two prius primes. I wanted to get a 240v evse that would work for all of them so I put in a 14-50 socket and got the chargepoint plug in version. What made me go with the chargepoint is I got a deal on amazon for a refurbished one and I got the $300 back from Eversource. It had a long enough cord to reach all 3 cars, and would charge my S at 40A. For me being able to use the evse for all cars was a priority. With the rebate it was the cheapest solution too. The chargepoint has decent monitoring of charging at home and out in public too. The connectedsolutions charge limiting has had no impact on my charging habits either. The events are pre-announced and so far there have been 8 events, most are two hours between 6 and 8pm. The longest one last August was from 4 to 7pm. I'm not normally charging in those hours so it wasn't even noticed let alone a problem. I was originally going to get an openevse kit but with the eversource kickback, the chargepoint seemed a no brainer. I had previously just been using the portable tesla evse that came with my S on a 14-50 socket.

In any case, unless you have a car that can use more than 40A, I'd put in a 14-50 socket so you have options. There are many stations with 14-50 plugs.

 

[ScoGold]

I signed up in April and received the initial $50 incentive payout. I've not received anything since that I'm aware of - probably due to my charging by mistake during the peak times which disqualifies you for that months payment if I recall correctly. An example of that charging was when I went to the office for the first time in a year, and took advantage of the free L2 charging they had there. Since I did it during peak use hours, that was noted on the account as a disqualifying charge event for the program, even though it was free to me to charge.

The program requires you to sign in to your Tesla account on your Fleetcarma account so they can pull charging data from Tesla servers. Very simple to setup.

As you can see from this month's dashboard screen capture, I don't drive/charge much these days.

I just reached out to the team at FleetCarma to see what the details on the program are and it sounds like you will not get penalized if you are not solely charging during Off-Peak. They also called out that the payments for the program will not be starting until July 2021, so that is likely why you have not seen anything yet. This seems inconsistent as the email I received from them this morning stated the program was June-September.

I guess we will just wait to see if any checks are sent. Not work to do on our end but it's free money if it shows up.

Email from FleetCarma:
Thanks for reaching out! Off peak charging rewards do not start until July 1st which is why you never received any rewards since the $50 Getting Started reward. From July 1st-Sept 30th you will earn $0.05kWh when you charge during off peak. Any months after September you will earn $0.03kWh for charging off peak.

As far as I'm aware when you charge with Eversource utility regardless if it is at home at a free charge station you will not be penalized. Although, the on peak times still apply when you charge at a free station, if you charge during on peak hours the charging data from this charge will display as on peak in your dashboard.

You would need to reach out directly to Eversource as they would be able to provide locations of charges that are under their service territory.

 

[Lmkwin]

We signed up in 2021. We don't have an EV. Just panels and 2 Powerwall 2's. Got notice in winter that Eversource wasn't going to need any "event" days in the program. A week or so ago we got notice that they would be drawing from the battery for the summer period. They just started last week. A fewe things are kind of screwy, in my opinion, so far.

They control the battery during the discharge. Don't have a problem with this but you have no idea they are controlling it.

The discharge doesn't show up on the app when it's occurring. The app displays as Stand by and the battery at 100%. I don't know if being at 100% is a requirement for them to tap into it. After the "event" is done(after 7 or 8pm), the app displays the current state of the system.

They drain it down to the mid 20% level. This means that the next day you are charging battery from solar (assuming sunny day) and drawing from the grid to power the home until the battery is recharged. So you are feeding into the grid during the "event" and then sucking from the grid the following day.

So it's July 7th now. I believe there have been 3 or 4 "events". I believe that this period runs to the end of September, but they claim that there will be no more than 60 "events" for the summer. They cap at 5 "events" for the winter. I believe that Tesla squares up and pays after the end of the year.

I don't like not having control, or at least awareness, of my power supply. Got the batteries to provide that. ConnectedSolutions removes some of that security. We'll see how the payout is and then make the decision whether to continue or not.

 

[Tdreamer]

We signed up in 2021. We don't have an EV. Just panels and 2 Powerwall 2's. Got notice in winter that Eversource wasn't going to need any "event" days in the program. A week or so ago we got notice that they would be drawing from the battery for the summer period. They just started last week. A fewe things are kind of screwy, in my opinion, so far.

They control the battery during the discharge. Don't have a problem with this but you have no idea they are controlling it.

The discharge doesn't show up on the app when it's occurring. The app displays as Stand by and the battery at 100%. I don't know if being at 100% is a requirement for them to tap into it. After the "event" is done(after 7 or 8pm), the app displays the current state of the system.

They drain it down to the mid 20% level. This means that the next day you are charging battery from solar (assuming sunny day) and drawing from the grid to power the home until the battery is recharged. So you are feeding into the grid during the "event" and then sucking from the grid the following day.

So it's July 7th now. I believe there have been 3 or 4 "events". I believe that this period runs to the end of September, but they claim that there will be no more than 60 "events" for the summer. They cap at 5 "events" for the winter. I believe that Tesla squares up and pays after the end of the year.

I don't like not having control, or at least awareness, of my power supply. Got the batteries to provide that. ConnectedSolutions removes some of that security. We'll see how the payout is and then make the decision whether to continue or not.

Agree on most points. It would be ideal if the app notified you of either an impending event or an event-in-progress (or both) as it does already for Storm Watch. Currently you have to know what your normal production and utilization patterns are in the app, and detect an abnormal pattern as evidence of the events.

Bottom line is if you don't like yielding control of your battery storage to the utility, then the ConnectedSolutions programs are not for you.