National Grid Massachusetts new Charging Program

[oadesign]

Massachusetts Mach-E owners who have National Grid: Download their new ‘Smart Charge’ app to earn rewards and rebates.
Note: Currently they’re only synching to ChargePoint EVSEs (thankfully mine is a Home Flex!)

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[Gullwingdmc]

Massachusetts Mach-E owners who have National Grid: Download their new ‘Smart Charge’ app to earn rewards and rebates.
Note: Currently they’re only synching to ChargePoint EVSEs (thankfully mine is a Home Flex!)

Sweet!! I have both.

 

[Gullwingdmc]

@oadesign Where did you see this? I can’t find anything about it on a national grid page.

 

[oadesign]

@oadesign Where did you see this? I can’t find anything about it on a national grid page.

I'd signed up for notifications on their site months and months ago; now they finally launched it:

Thank you for your interest in National Grid’s residential EV programs. You are invited to participate in the MA EV Off-Peak Charging Program via the Charge Smart MA app, which allows EV drivers like you to earn rebates by charging your electric vehicle during off-peak hours.​
The Charge Smart MA app is free to use and wirelessly connects to a wide range of vehicles and selected chargers.​
See how Charge Smart MA can help you with your charging:​
Earn rebates for every kWh of off-peak charging you do through the app (9pm – 1pm, Monday – Friday excluding federal holidays).
Earn back 5¢/kWh in rebates for the off-peak charging you do from June 1 – Sept. 30, and 3¢/kWh for all other months.
Track all the EV charging you do at home and on the go - including kWh usage and estimated electricity costs.
Please note participants of the Connected Solutions EV & PHEV demand response program are not eligible to simultaneously participate in the MA EV Off-Peak Charging Program.​
For more details about the MA EV Off-Peak Charging program see the program webpage: ngrid.com/chargesmart-ma For technical support contact [email protected]​

 

[Gullwingdmc]

I'd signed up for notifications on their site months and months ago; now they finally launched it:

​

Thank you for your interest in National Grid’s residential EV programs. You are invited to participate in the MA EV Off-Peak Charging Program via the Charge Smart MA app, which allows EV drivers like you to earn rebates by charging your electric vehicle during off-peak hours.​
The Charge Smart MA app is free to use and wirelessly connects to a wide range of vehicles and selected chargers.​
See how Charge Smart MA can help you with your charging:​
Earn rebates for every kWh of off-peak charging you do through the app (9pm – 1pm, Monday – Friday excluding federal holidays).
Earn back 5¢/kWh in rebates for the off-peak charging you do from June 1 – Sept. 30, and 3¢/kWh for all other months.
Track all the EV charging you do at home and on the go - including kWh usage and estimated electricity costs.
Please note participants of the Connected Solutions EV & PHEV demand response program are not eligible to simultaneously participate in the MA EV Off-Peak Charging Program.​
For more details about the MA EV Off-Peak Charging program see the program webpage: ngrid.com/chargesmart-ma For technical support contact [email protected]​

Nice. I also just found this page via the App Store link
https://www.nationalgridus.com/Charge-Smart-MA
My only concern now is it wants access to my FordPass account. I’m fine giving it access to the ChargePoint, but giving it access to the car seems a bit much

 

[bshaw]

Nice. I also just found this page via the App Store link
https://www.nationalgridus.com/Charge-Smart-MA
My only concern now is it wants access to my FordPass account. I’m fine giving it access to the ChargePoint, but giving it access to the car seems a bit much

Interesting. This is the way I was hoping things will be trending. Utility companies integrating directly with the apps for the car, instead of having to choose a particular EVSE.
How is it asking to integrate with FordPass? Asking for your username/password? Or some other way?

 

[Gullwingdmc]

How is it asking to integrate with FordPass? Asking for your username/password? Or some other way?

It takes you to a ford page inside the app and asks you to log in. In theory it’s just getting an authentication token and not your actual username and password. This not what concerns me though. I’m fine with them reading the charging data, I just don’t want them telling the car to do anything, i.e. stop charging. I know National Grid has a program like that where they can stop your car from charging during peak events. I haven’t signed up for that specifically because I don’t want them telling my car to do anything.

 

[oadesign]

Nice. I also just found this page via the App Store link
https://www.nationalgridus.com/Charge-Smart-MA
My only concern now is it wants access to my FordPass account. I’m fine giving it access to the ChargePoint, but giving it access to the car seems a bit much

I think it's necessary, since that's where charging is controlled, rather than via our ESVEs.

 

[bshaw]

It takes you to a ford page inside the app and asks you to log in. In theory it’s just getting an authentication token and not your actual username and password. This not what concerns me though. I’m fine with them reading the charging data, I just don’t want them telling the car to do anything, i.e. stop charging. I know National Grid has a program like that where they can stop your car from charging during peak events. I haven’t signed up for that specifically because I don’t want them telling my car to do anything.

Hopefully Ford has us covered with ability to let the utility connection be secure and read only.

In terms of whether the utility surprise shuts off charging during a peak event — couldn’t they do the same with telling the EVSE to shut down?

 

[Gullwingdmc]

Hopefully Ford has us covered with ability to let the utility connection be secure and read only.

In terms of whether the utility surprise shuts off charging during a peak event — couldn’t they do the same with telling the EVSE to shut down?

Yeah I’d hope so.

I know, in theory it’s the same thing. I just don’t like the idea of a company doing anything to my car, the EVSE bothers me less.

 

[bshaw]

Yeah I’d hope so.

I know, in theory it’s the same thing. I just don’t like the idea of a company doing anything to my car, the EVSE bothers me less.

We have Eversource for electric and they have the ability to limit my thermostat setting in the summer, but they send a notification when they're doing it, which I can then choose to override. And, they don't shut off the AC, but just bump the temperature setting up a little bit.

I would hope any car charging events would be similarly handled in the future.
The MME doesn't support this currently, but if the utility told the car to only draw 15A for a couple hours instead of 40A, that would be fine with me. Aggregated across several hundred cars in a region and that would really help reduce usage during peak events.

 

[oadesign]

We have Eversource for electric and they have the ability to limit my thermostat setting in the summer, but they send a notification when they're doing it, which I can then choose to override. And, they don't shut off the AC, but just bump the temperature setting up a little bit.

I would hope any car charging events would be similarly handled in the future.
The MME doesn't support this currently, but if the utility told the car to only draw 15A for a couple hours instead of 40A, that would be fine with me. Aggregated across several hundred cars in a region and that would really help reduce usage during peak events.

I have the same with National Grid with my Ecobee thermostat.

 

[Gullwingdmc]

Reading some of the privacy policies on this service make me want to go running away from it as fast as I can.

First, you give them access to your FP account via token, but I see nowhere on Ford’s site where you can revoke that token.

Second, you are not giving National Grid access to your FP Account, it’s a third party service called “SmartCar” and they have a lengthy privacy policy where they talk in circles about your data, but don’t explicitly outline what data they have access to.

https://smartcar.com/privacy/

Third, national grid mentions they log your locations in addition to battery and charging info. I’f this is all about how much I’m charging at home, why do you need to track my location.

This seems like a great way to Trojan horse some data mining into your car. If that’s worth the $20 a month you might save, go for it, but for all the above reasons…

 

[bshaw]

Yea, looks like they are using OAuth2 to get an access token from FordPass.

You're right, Ford should give us a page to see which apps/companies have been given access to our FordPass, AND an ability to revoke the token.

Hey, if the data going back to this 3rd party is as buggy as what's displayed on FordPass, you could come out way ahead sometimes --- i.e. Fordpass says you delivered 99kWh, but only charged for 1-minute at home. You just earned a 99 * $0.05 discount off your National Grid bill for that session.

 

[BostonPete]

So at the bottom it says Connect your Vehicle OR Charger so can you just link it to the Charge Point if you have one?

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