I'm sitting through an OhmHour right now, so I thought I'd chime in again. I mentioned before that due to the "penalty" for solar users, I'd opted out of OhmHours after sundown, which meant pretty sitting out entirely for the last two years. But suddenly a few weeks ago, my Kasa power automation devices all tripped off at 8 pm, which at first I thought was a power outage - turns out they'd opted me back in for OhmHours at all hours.
I checked the OhmConnect site, and apparently they made a major overhaul (nerf?) to the program. It's apparently causing a lot of uproar among the active community. Here are some of the key differences from the old program, including impact on solar users:
-no more opting out of OhmHours by time of day, or manually. So I've now seen at least 1-2 per week, which I recall was not unusual for summers. Still mostly at 7 or 8 pm. The only way to opt out is to quit the program entirely.
-they changed the earning units from Points to Watts. Before, a 1Kwh reductioncould be 100 Points, which was worth about $1, while now 1000 Watts is worth about $1 to $1.10 nominally. They converted everyone's Point balances to the new units, from what I can tell it was a neutral conversion, but many claim their balances were nerfed (I think they don't grasp the new units yet).
-streaks got a complete nerf. Before, each additional streak added a 5% mutliplier, so streak of 20 gave 100% bonus or 2X overall , streak of 40 gave 200% bonus, etc. Now they still track your streak, but it seems to be worth nothing at all.
-Gold, Silver, Platinum tier levels for achieving a certain % reduction also got a massive nerf. They used to give 50% to 100% or more bonuses, which stacked with streak bonuses. Now they give between 10-20% discount on redeeming your balance for cash or other rewards, so an effective 10-20% bonus instead.
-the weird tiered level system for solar users is still there, entirely unchanged from a few years back. In fact it is even more explicit now, if you have solar, your baseline for tier levels is shown as 2000 Potential Watts, regardless of your actual baseline usage. To hit Gold you have to average a 300W absolute reduction (15% of 2000), to hit Platinum you have to average a 800W absolute reduction (40% of 2000). Perhaps this went away for a year or two when I sat out, but it's back as I remember it. Now for actual Watts earnings, it's still based on your actual baseline typical usage, but weirdly solar users can't see their baseline before the OhmHour, because all they show you is the 2000 Potential Watts (which only applies for tier status qualification).
-if you opt in Devices like Kasa automation, smart thermostats, Tesla car charging, you used to earn tokens to be redeemed for other things that could create further multipliers once in a while. Now you get Device Watts, I'm seeing worth about 5 to 40 cents per device. I'm not sure what you get for disabling Tesla charging though, be forewarned in the past it kept your car from ever sleeping, which would waste several kwh per day (so much for energy conservation!).
The community seems to be in an uproar, as the streak and tier multipliers used to give 2-5X bonuses, which for a heavy user meant they were earning $20-50 per OhmHour, now nerfed to say $5 with a 20% redemption bonus. For me, it's a bit neutral, I previously earned $1 or less reducing my usage from 800 watts to say 300 at 8 pm, now I get about the same. I have a bunch of Kasa smart outlets, so I get about $0.50 extra - which almost doubles my modest earnings.
As a solar user who can't go negative at night, I still can't hit the tier levels, but now it doesn't matter because they're effectively worthless. In some ways by nerfing streaks and tiers though, it's ironically a bit more fair to solar and low-baseline users, since nobody can make out like a bandit anymore - but I feel for the the community. I'm staying in, not so much for the modest ~$1/week earnings, but more that I'm too lazy to figure out how to withdraw entirely from the program (the only way to opt out now).