Ohm Connect Review: How to Earn Money by Reducing your Electricity Usage.
With Ohmconnect you can get paid to watch & reduce how much electricity you use at home. Usually, this is the kinda stuff that I think is a total scam, but now that I have been using it for almost 2 years I can confirm that it is legit. You aren’t going to make a ton of money but usually people average between $100-$300 a year.
If you live in certain parts of California or Texas keep reading, I am unsure if other states also offer this as an option. Even if you don’t live in California, it’s a pretty cool thing to know about how your home impacts the energy grid and that you can actually impact how energy is used and generated in your state. Currently, all PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E electric service customers are eligible.
As a person who lives in the Bay Area I am very aware of power shutoffs due to wildfires and also love the appeal of solar energy. It feels like there isn’t much we can do unless we go full solar, but that is going to be bundled with a roof replacement project and we just aren’t quite ready to do that yet.
In the meantime, I’ve signed up with Ohm Connect, which rewards you for saving energy. If you think about it, everyone uses electricity at the same time of the day, between 5-9pm is when people start cooking, running the dishwasher, doing a load of laundry that just needs to get done etc.
As more people use energy and the demand goes up, more sources of electricity are needed to turn on and oftentimes they aren’t clean sources like solar.
OhmConnect tells you when demand is expected to peak and actually pays you for using less energy.
How does OhmConnect work?
They send an email or text a few days before an OhmHour letting you know when to conserve energy. They send a target goal of reduction, it takes a little bit to understand how much you can reduce, like if you have the TV on etc.
Reduce energy usage. At the very least we don’t run the dishwasher, AC or laundry during this hour and it works out well. Or if we can we just decide to leave the house for a walk and shut everything off. The less you use, the more you beat your goal and the more you earn.
Earn Ohm connect rewards in forms of points and money (typically an Amazon or Target gift card). Depending on if you hit your goals you can also be entered to win bigger prizes. I have never won one of these, but it’s fun to try.
There are also lots of fun ways to use OhmConnect. Every OhmConnect user has a status Level, ranging from Carbon to Diamond. Your status is determined by how much you reduce during #OhmHours and how many #OhmHours you participate in. The higher your status, the more points & money you'll earn.
It’s kinda fun! I am currently gold status because we have been slacking a little lately.
You can also connect smart devices to earn even more, we have our Nest and a smart plug in the office connected. This means that that your linked devices automatically shut off and you earn cash. I’ve never even noticed when they are off. Here’s a history of my earnings from a Nest Thermostat and a smart plug in our office.
It’s a pretty cool way to be more aware of how much energy we are all using (hello climate change) and also earn a little cash too. Are you ready to participate in Ohmhours?