Samsung has launched a brand new demand response program for its SmartThings good dwelling platform. Flex Join permits your SmartThings related home equipment to speak with the grid and mechanically scale back power use when there’s a spike in demand, which may assist keep away from blackouts. Whereas demand response applications have made for some scary headlines, many consultants consider connecting our good houses to the grid is important for managing the pressure on our power community.
Flex Join is out there in New York and California and works with SmartThings Vitality — an power administration resolution. It faucets into SmartThings’ AI Vitality Mode to automate how good home equipment and related gadgets like lights and thermostats reply to demand response occasions.
AI Vitality Mode, which Samsung says can save as much as 70 p.c of power consumption when utilizing Samsung merchandise, is a brilliant program that learns your family’s routines and mechanically adjusts home equipment and gadgets’ power use to avoid wasting power primarily based on targets you set within the app.
In keeping with Samsung, when a requirement response sign is acquired out of your utility firm, Flex Join can mechanically activate the AI Vitality Mode to avoid wasting further power use in supported home equipment, mechanically energy off gadgets — together with third-party lights and plugs — and mechanically regulate supported thermostats to decrease their power use.
In the event you don’t have any supported home equipment, you may nonetheless use the SmartThings Vitality characteristic to obtain alerts when an occasion is triggered. This fashion, you may know to regulate your thermostat or not run your dryer.
The Flex Join program is elective, and you may select which gadgets you need to enroll, in addition to change them at any time. Any equipment or gadget that works with SmartThings Vitality could be related to Flex Join. Whereas the appropriate gadgets listing is dominated by Samsung home equipment, a number of third-party plugs, lights, and thermostats are supported. Some notable manufacturers embody Wemo, TP-Hyperlink, Aeotec, Ecobee, Sengled, and Resideo (Honeywell House). There’s additionally assist for Tesla merchandise, together with the Powerwall and Loop EV chargers.
Samsung hasn’t offered particular particulars on how utilities will work with this system, if there are plans to develop to extra states, or when Flex Join will go stay. We’ll replace this put up with extra data after we obtain it.
