Get $50 for reducing pollution!

[Prime_Mover]

FYI: National Grid in Massachusetts is offering EV owners $50 upfront and $20 per year for the ability to pause EV charging for a few hours on hot summer days to reduce pollution from peaker power plants. Sounds like a win-win to me!

You can go here to sign up: ConnectedSolutions EV

There are more details on this page: EV and PHEV Program

 

[jamseeeee]

Great find! I just signed up for this. I also saw this article recently Massachusetts utilities propose plans to ramp up electric vehicle infrastructure - Energy News Network

I think currently the off-peak programs are only for commercial national grid users- hopefully, they bring it to residential!

 

[BioSci]

I signed up for this in December and just got a check for $50 from National Grid.

 

[North75]

So Is this controlling your home charger? Or are they somehow communication directly with the car to tell it to stop charging? I don't see anything about requiring a connected charger, so I'm assuming the latter? Do you have to give National Grid your Tesla account info? (don't like the sound of that) or do they do it directly through Tesla somehow?

 

[BioSci]

No, as far as I can tell, there is no way right now for NG to control the Tesla charging, because I gave them no car-specific info. At home I use the mobile charger plugged into a 240V outlet. AFAIK it's free money. If they ask for that info I'll provide it, because I have no need to charge at peak hours.

 

[North75]

I read the faq on the website and it says "Communication with your vehicle will be done through its onboard telematics system, which uses a cellular signal. So, you don’t need to connect to Wi-Fi."
So I guess it tells the car to stop charging. I wonder how they are gaining access if you didn't have to give them any car specific info.

 

[Les236]

I had to download and install the Charge Smart MA app and I did have to use a one-time sign in for them to gain access to my charging. When I open the app it shows current connectivity, history of charging (at home and away from home), and rebates earned.

 

[BioSci]

Based on this, I'm guessing I signed up before they started implementing the Smart Charge MA app. (Smahht chaghh, as they say in these parts)

 

[cfbackrow]

thanks for this heads up, I'll sign up when I take delivery

 

[jlv1]

No, as far as I can tell, there is no way right now for NG to control the Tesla charging, because I gave them no car-specific info. At home I use the mobile charger plugged into a 240V outlet. AFAIK it's free money. If they ask for that info I'll provide it, because I have no need to charge at peak hours.

The sign-up only asks for my address and email address. I suppose they could cross-reference the email address to my Tesla account. Once they do that, they *can* tell my car to stop charging if it is geolocated at home and charging. After all, my Powerwall has the same ability to do that - if I lose the grid connection and it switches to pulling electricity from the Powerwall batteries, it will let my car continue to charge until the Powerwall battery is drained to a level I set, and at that point it will tell my car to stop charging via the Tesla API - it talks to the car, not the EVSE.