Samsung has launched a brand new demand response program for its SmartThings sensible residence platform. Flex Connect permits your SmartThings linked home equipment to speak with the grid and robotically cut back vitality use when there’s a spike in demand, which may assist keep away from blackouts. Whereas demand response packages have made for some scary headlines, many consultants consider connecting our smart homes to the grid is essential for managing the pressure on our vitality community.
Flex Join is obtainable in New York and California and works with SmartThings Vitality — an vitality administration answer. It faucets into SmartThings’ AI Energy Mode to automate how sensible home equipment and linked units like lights and thermostats reply to demand response occasions.
AI Vitality Mode, which Samsung says can save as much as 70 percent of energy consumption when utilizing Samsung merchandise, is a brilliant program that learns your family’s routines and robotically adjusts home equipment and units’ vitality use to avoid wasting vitality primarily based on targets you set within the app.
Based on Samsung, when a requirement response sign is acquired out of your utility firm, Flex Join can robotically activate the AI Energy Mode to avoid wasting additional vitality use in supported home equipment, robotically energy off units — together with third-party lights and plugs — and robotically modify supported thermostats to decrease their vitality use.
For those who don’t have any supported home equipment, you may nonetheless use the SmartThings Vitality characteristic to obtain alerts when an occasion is triggered. This manner, you may know to regulate your thermostat or not run your dryer.
The Flex Join program is non-compulsory, and you may select which units you need to enroll, in addition to change them at any time. Any equipment or system that works with SmartThings Vitality will be linked to Flex Join. Whereas the suitable units checklist is dominated by Samsung home equipment, several third-party plugs, lights, and thermostats are supported. Some notable manufacturers embody Wemo, TP-Hyperlink, Aeotec, Ecobee, Sengled, and Resideo (Honeywell Residence). There’s additionally help for Tesla products, together with the Powerwall and Loop EV chargers.
Samsung hasn’t supplied 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 reside. We’ll replace this put up with extra data after we obtain it.