Those that own an ecobee smart thermostat are about to save some more money on their heating and cooling bills. The company, today, announced a new feature called ‘Peak Relief’. The feature is quite simple to explain. It will work to save you money during peak electricity hours. The way it works is, ecobee will run more during off peak hours, versus peak hours. So your home won’t be hotter or colder, just using more electricity at other times of the day.
Now, this only works with those that are on Time of Use rates with their electricity companies. Some electric companies, very few though, will charge you more for the electricity that you use during peak hours, versus off-peak hours. It is sort of like the way carriers would offer unlimited night minutes, years ago. This new feature isn’t actually all that new, or really earth shattering, but it can save you some money if you are a customer that is on Time of Use rates.
ecobee, and other smart thermostats, already work to help save you money by running less, and keeping your home at a specific temperature, instead of setting your thermostat to a specific one. So that it will only turn on when your home changes temperatures, which usually happens during the day anyways. Now with Peak Relief from ecobee, you can save even more money on your heating and cooling bills. This is why many people are switching to smart thermostats, even though they are more expensive than a regular thermostat, they do offer more savings, which is a good thing. This feature from ecobee is rolling out now, so it should be available on the ecobee3, ecobee3 lite and ecobee4 smart thermostats in the coming days and weeks. You can check the app and look for an update and try to pull it down.