Energate Inc launches first WattTime-enabled thermostat

Happy Earth Day from WattTime! We’re delighted to celebrate it this year by launching our new partnership with Energate Inc, creator of the HōlHōm smart thermostat.

A select few of Energate’s HōlHōm smart thermostat owners in the Chicago area will soon be offered a new feature – to enable “Clean Power Mode” by WattTime. Those of you already familiar with WattTime can guess how it works: in Clean Power Mode, these thermostats will actively prioritize electricity from environmentally-friendly power plants by shifting electricity consumption to moments when those power plants have surplus energy.

As usual with WattTime, we’ve also bent over backwards to ensure that enabling this feature will be free, effortless, and will not affect how comfortable anyone’s home or office is. That’s possible because air conditioners and heaters work by continuously cycling on and off anyway, so they can easily deploy WattTime’s timing-based technology just by making those cycles happen intelligently, not at random times.

It really is environmentalism, made effortless. Sound pretty good? We know that in surveys, the vast majority of people agree, telling us that they would choose a smart thermostat with a feature like that.

But, as any good social scientist knows, it's easy to say something in a survey. You have to also check what people really do in practice. So, as part of the work we’re doing supported by the Great Lakes Protection Fund, our wonderful partner Delta Institute is helping us conduct this pilot with Energate as a careful, scientifically rigorous test. What Delta is measuring is, if two smart devices are sold side by side and only one of them offers Clean Power Mode, does it make buyers choose that one more often? If it turns out the answer is yes, we think other companies who sell smart devices will quickly get the message that choosing to go green is just plain good business. Since 40% of thermostat sales nationwide are now smart thermostats, that could add up to a lot of devices, pretty fast.

Because this pilot is a science experiment as much as a product release, not just anyone can sign up for a WattTime-enabled smart thermostat from Energate today. But if the pilot does find that Clean Power Mode is indeed popular, we’ll be expanding to other regions soon. If you’d be interested in trying the world’s first smart thermostat that automatically prioritizes clean energy, you can sign up on our mailing list here.

Use only clean energy with the flip of a switch thanks to WattTime's new system

Energate and WattTime.org partner to enable smart thermostat to maximize use of environmentally friendly resources

JuiceBox Green 40 is now ready to order on Amazon

Our partner eMotorWerks has recently put the JuiceBox Green 40 on Amazon, available to order immediately. Only 20 are in stock so hurry while supply lasts! The JuiceBox Green 40 is an electric vehicle charging station that enables users like you to truly go green. All you have to do is set your settings and plug in your car to let your car charge whenever there is clean energy available on the grid. The result is a car charged up on electricity generated from cleaner power sources! To read more about how it all works, check out the case study.

First HVAC install with Building Clouds

Not only is this an achievement made possible by The Green Initiative Fund and our partner Building Clouds, Sutardja Dai Hall becomes the first building on UC Berkeley campus to begin optimizing the HVAC package's energy loads to cut carbon emissions.

Building Clouds Co-founder Bob Wallace met with us on the rooftop of Sutardja Dai Hall and demonstrated the equipment installation under one hour. As soon as the system was up and running, and we were able to collect data starting that day.

Find out more about this project in case studies.

WattTime pinpoints the greenest grid power

Greenest EV charging solution on market just released

New home electric-car charging station chooses greenest power

eMotorWerks and WattTime reveal world’s first EV charging solution that minimizes greenhouse gas emissions

SAN CARLOS, Calif., June 25, 2015 /PRNewswire/
eMotorWerks, a leading manufacturer of intelligent and connected Smart[Grid] charging solutions for electric vehicles (EV), and WattTime, a new environmental nonprofit specializing in clean energy software, announced today the launch of JuiceBox™ Green 40. This collaboration produced a smart EV charging station capable of automatically reducing the carbon footprint of EV charging through groundbreaking new environmentallysmart timing algorithms.

EV drivers can now use the WattTime-enabled JuiceBox Green 40 to ensure the lowest possible greenhouse gas emissions from their vehicle. WattTime’s software automatically analyzes the local power grid in real time to identify moments when charging the EV would only draw power from particularly clean power plants—from renewables to highly efficient power plants—and JuiceBox adjusts EV charging schedules to draw only on the cleanest power sources available.

“We are thrilled to offer the cleanest-charging EVSE ever produced,” stated eMotorWerks founder & CEO Valery Miftakhov, “after developing the most advanced and efficient charging solutions for electric vehicles it was a natural progression to also develop the cleanest. EV drivers now have even greater choice and control over how they charge.”

JuiceBox Green 40 not only charges an EV faster than most EVSEs on the market, it is the only EVSE that helps to ensure the cleanest charge. Combined with the power of JuiceNet™, which prioritizes time and rate of charge based on user-configured profiles, the EV owner simply plugs their EV into their JuiceBox Green 40 knowing the system will do the rest. This latest version of JuiceBox highlights the ultimate flexibility of eMotorWerks’ cloudbased EV Charging platform, JuiceNet, by integrating with WattTime. JuiceNet introduces the concept of software based charging profiles that can be seamlessly applied to JuiceBox stations.

“EVs have always held the promise of a cleaner energy future, but they are only as clean as the electricity they use. So we are delighted that thanks to the forward-looking leadership of one EV charging station manufacturer, eMotorWerks, EV drivers everywhere now have the choice to automatically run their car strictly on the cleanest possible sources on their own local power grid,” says Gavin McCormick, Co-founder and Executive Director of WattTime.

About eMotorWerks
eMotorWerks is revolutionizing the EV charging market with its JuiceBox Smart[Grid] EV charging solutions. JuiceBox maximizes charging efficiency & speed while providing EV owners the intuitive control and visibility that traditional EV chargers lack. JuiceBox is also fully Smart[Grid] enabled. By shifting when and how much electricity the JuiceBox network draws from the grid, eMotorWerks helps utilities and grid operators reduce electricity costs, ease grid congestion, absorb excess solar and wind power, and provide rapid response to unforeseen grid events. For more information on eMotorWerks, visit www.emotorwerks.com

About WattTime
WattTime is a not-for-profit software startup built on cuttingedge research by University of California, Berkeley PhDs. WattTime's "environmental demand response" platform makes it possible to actually choose which power plants you rely on. With a simple software update, smart device owners can instantly and permanently reduce their carbon footprint, automatically shift production from dirty to clean power plants, and help renewables compete on the grid. Forward-looking companies partner with WattTime to empower their users to make a real difference for the environment that is as easy as pushing a button. For more information, please visit www.watttime.org.

Electric vehicles are getting marginally better, in a big way