30 minute notification of a mega hour...really?
hyacinthoside
Member Posts: 3
6/11/19 At 6:30 tonight, in the middle of dinner prep, we get a notification of a mega hour at 7pm... 30 minutes notice, and not only that, its 2 hours long. I dont have an issue with the mega hour or the 2 hours, but 30 minute notification??????
And what makes it even more negative , is the streak will be broken. Having the notification the day before gives time to prepare, 30 minutes is just ridiculous. If you are going to do this then at least make it fair by allowing streaks not to be broken with such little notice.
I have to be honest, myself and my friends and neighbors are having second thoughts about continuing with ohmhours.
4
Answers
Alternative viewpoint: happy to get another Mega hour, especially a 2 hour Mega
I've been with the program about 2 years and once we had a 15 minute notice in the middle of the day like 4 PM. OC says they don't have control over how much time between notification and onset. We are lucky it only happens once in a while. Personally, in the middle of this heat wave in SF I was surprised it wasn't called the beginning of the heat spell.
Same : / they just emailed me thirty minutes beforehand. It's usually at least a day in advance but probably a special occurrence due to the flex alert today for the heat wave. Hopefully they can waive the streak-break on this one.
I received no notice at all. I found out 30 minutes in after randomly logging in to check the status of a previous hour.
MEGA #OhmHour Today, 7 - 9PM 🔥
Inbox
x
OhmConnect via amazonses.com
6:35 PM (Copy of my email notification)
I wasn't home at the time. In class with my cell off which got a text only 25 mins. before just like the email. Now my streak will be ruined! Not okay.
Instead of complaining because you were caught off guard, be thankful it was coming. Imagine not being able to opt out in time. Of course, until sometime last year they didn’t start penalties.
I knew an event had to be coming, there was just no way with the alert from PG&E yesterday (automated message).
Get streak saver card.... time to make some $$$.
I got no notice either, just saw it checking on the status of the one from last night. That's disappointing, have never missed one in the 13 months I've been a member.
I didn't get any notification for the 7-9pm mega ohmhour even though I was able to receive email and text notifications for all other recent ohmhours. I didn't know it was happening until I saw it on my dashboard near the end of the event. Fortunately we weren't using much energy tonight so hopefully we should still come in below the mega ohmhour goal. This is my first mega summer with OhmConnect and this was my first 2 hours ohmhour event. Would have liked to receive a notification, even if it's just 30 minutes before the event.
Sounds like this was triggered by the CA state wide flex alert. I signed up to receive flex alert in case this happens again:
https://www.flexalert.org/
After not getting a notification about the event, and then scrambling to participate, looks like the event has now been removed from my account. What a wonderful evening.
CAISO cannot always look into their crystal ball and know what the send out is going to be for the day.
People understand that what is done is called forecasting. An educated guess is made based on all the data available.
An Ohm Hour May not fit into our warm and fuzzy schedule but the balancing authorities aren’t looking at whether our streak will be broken or not. They are looking at real time system conditions. System integrity is king.
I didn't get paid for the flex hour since the event somehow disappeared from my dashboard. How many kWh were you able to save and how many Base Points did you receive?
I had three Mega OhmHours over the past two weeks including the flex alert on 6/11. Here are the base points/kWh that I received:
6/5: 221.9
6/10: 199.0
6/11: 207.7
Seems like we both had the same Mega OHs.
6/5: 230.4
6/10:198.9
6/11: 207.6
Probably some minor rounding errors, but basically the same base points/kWh.
@cwied and @SFPowerSaver -- what was your forecast? I had these same hours and my base points were
6/5 175
6/10 135
6/11 236
I have solar and use very little power so my forecast was all less than 1 kWh per event. Don't get me wrong--I'm happy earning over $31 for these three events (comparing to $1.11 and $3.59 for the two just before this)--pays my monthly $10 line fee for three months--
And on a side note, OC tells us that each event has a different payout--here's an excerpt from a reply I got regarding this:
Hi there. That's a good question. The cost of energy varies widely from minute to minute and location. Due to this, the points for #OhmHours varies from event to event, and from location to location. No two #OhmHours are ever priced the same. That's why you'll often see different points for hours where you had close to the same reductions. With this said, you should expect your earnings to vary greatly.You can track your #OhmHour rewards along with streak and status bonuses in your points history.
Where are you located approximately? I'm in SF and cwied is in San Mateo.
My forecasts were ~2.1kWh for 6/5 and 6/10, and 3.7kWh for 6/11 (2 hour OH).
That explains why our 6/5 base points are different. I had it 8-9PM on 6/5.
@SFPowerSaver I'm in SF near CCSF..
my hours were 8-9 PM plus 7-8 PM for 2 hr. I've limited my hours to about 8 PM since I am solar and don't want to risk having negative forecasts from past solar production.