Article Summary:
If you’ve signed up for the Rush Hour Rewards program, you’ll get a message from the Nest app and on your thermostat that your power company has scheduled a Rush Hour. Your thermostat will look at your usual temperature schedule and tune the heating or cooling up or down a few degrees to save more energy when there’s a high demand.
Your home, your heating system, and your cooling system are all unique, so how your thermostat will tune your heating or cooling during a Rush Hour will be a bit different for everyone. The Nest Learning Thermostat uses what it knows about your home: how quickly it heats and cools, what temperatures you like, how often your system needs to run to maintain them, the outside temperature, and even the weather forecast.
Whether it’s a Summer or Winter Rush Hour, your Nest Thermostat will take all of these these factors and use advanced algorithms to calculate how to give you the best balance of comfort while reducing your energy use a bit more when your power company really needs you to. Let’s use a Summer Rush Hour to compare what could happen with and without Rush Hour Rewards.
Without Rush Hour Rewards
In the Summer Rush Hour example below, you’ve set your Nest Learning Thermostat to cool to 76ºF (25ºC). Without Rush Hour Rewards, you’d use air conditioning during the Rush Hour to keep your home cool as the day heats up. This puts a strain on the electrical grid because everyone else is turning up their cooling at the same time to counter the rising temperatures.
With Rush Hour Rewards
If you’re enrolled in Rush Hour Rewards, you’ll receive a message on your Nest Learning Thermostat that a Rush Hour will start at 2pm and your system will start cooling early (pre-cooling) around 1pm. Your thermostat might use a little more energy before the Rush Hour to get your home to cool down quickly, but because your home is already comfortably cool when the Rush Hour hits, this will help it use less during the Rush Hour from 2-6pm. It’s like leaving work a bit early to avoid rush hour traffic.
During the Rush Hour, your Nest Thermostat will continue to run the air conditioner as needed to balance your comfort with rewards for your energy savings. In this example, the combination of pre-cooling and short periods of cooling during the Rush Hour means you’d use around half the energy you would have without participating in Rush Hour Rewards. You can see in the illustration below that cooling is turned off at specific times to minimize using your system during peak energy demand.
How early will my system turn on?
As mentioned before, the timing will be a bit different for everyone since your home and your system are unique. For instance, if your home is well insulated your system may turn on a bit closer to the Rush Hour start since it won’t have to work as much to pre-cool or pre-heat your home. However, if there’s going to be a Rush Hour in the morning, your thermostat won’t start pre-cooling or pre-heating before the Rush Hour unless you have Early-On enabled. This is to keep it quiet and comfortable while you sleep. We know how important a good night’s rest is, and we want to make sure you get it.
What happens if I’m away during a Rush Hour?
Rush Hour Rewards works a bit differently when your home is in Away mode. Your thermostat will make larger adjustments to the temperature when you’re away and smaller adjustments if you’re home. This will help save even more energy because it doesn’t have to consider your comfort while you’re not at home. Either way, the temperature will only change a few degrees at most.
What if I’m uncomfortable during a Rush Hour?
Whether you’re home or away, you’re always in control, even when Rush Hour Rewards is working. If you are ever uncomfortable, you can simply change the temperature on your thermostat or with the Nest app during a Rush Hour. Your Nest Thermostat will keep the temperatures you set, then return to your regular schedule. However, if you change the temperature during a Rush Hour, you may get less rewards from your power company.