Increasing Your Efficiency Without Impacting Your Lifestyle
Our Water Heater Efficiency Network (WHEN) is different from a traditional Peak Shaving or Demand Response Program. WHEN operates flexibly by the minute 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, continuously building a Smarter Grid.
WHEN works best in an affordable housing scenario. Where other energy storage and clean energy options carry high price tags, WHEN is installed at no cost and even generates new revenue for each connected property. Currently, affordable housing installations comprise the bulk of our operations in the Mid-Atlantic grid.
WHEN uses predictive analytics to ensure all participants have hot water when they need it. We use a secure network through the cloud to call hundreds of events per year. Since events are invisible to participants, no client notification or approval is necessary to call an event.
How is this possible? Simply put, we allocate the curtailment event to water heaters across our broad network according to individualized tenant usage patterns. We are currently managing the demand of thousands of water heaters as a part of PJM’s Frequency Regulation Market. Our systems are flexible enough to offer the additional service of shifting electricity demand to avoid peak hours of load on the grid and to avoid periods of highest electricity pricing.
This is a typical week in the electricity use of a water heater as measured by electricity demand (on the y-axis) and hour of the day (on the x-axis). While there are minor variations, the day-to-day timing of hot water use follows a predictable schedule. WHEN uses this predicable usage pattern to maintain plenty of hot water for tenant use.
