HomeKit-Compatible Ecobee Thermostat Trialing 'Peak Relief' Money Saving Feature

[MacRumors]

Smart thermostat company Ecobee has become the focus of a new profile shared online today by CNET, and alongside that article the company has revealed a new money saving feature for select Ecobee users called "Peak Relief." This feature was created to help users save on energy bills by automatically cutting down on heating and cooling when energy rates are higher, and then using more when rates are lower.

For those in the test, Ecobee says Peak Relief can help customers save an extra 10 percent on heating and cooling bills. Adding in the up to 23 percent of savings that Ecobee already claims from normal use, the company now aims to save customers as much as 33 percent on monthly heating and cooling bills.

Ecobee CEO Stuart Lombard mentioned that the feature was developed over a year and a half and uses artificial intelligence and indoor/outdoor temperature readings to customize settings for each home. This is then combined with time-of-use rates from a utilities provider, which charge customers different prices depending on the time of day versus standard flat rates that go up as users consume more energy.

CNET explains that Peak Relief requires time-of-use utility rates, and while these rates have the potential to cut-down costs it can be difficult to keep track of the higher demand periods, which is where Ecobee's new feature comes in:

Time-of-use has the potential to save customers money and help utilities avoid spikes in demand. But, many customers have a hard time keeping track of varying time-of-use rates, resulting in less energy savings for utilities and potentially higher costs for customers. Peak Relief may be able to alleviate that problem.

So, how does Peak Relief work? Let's say you set your thermostat temperature to cool at 74 degrees. With Peak Relief, the thermostat will automatically cool your home to 71 or 72 degrees when rates are lower, then allow the temperature to slowly go back up to 74 when rates increase.

The feature offers two preferences, so your thermostat will either focus more on comfort and stay closer to your temperature settings or focus more on savings and veer a little further away from those settings when rates change.

Peak Relief is rolling out today, but it appears that the test is fairly small and only for "select customers" in California, Arizona, and Ontario, Canada, and again only if those customers are using time-of-use utility rates. However, the company has already said that it plans to roll out Peak Relief to a wide audience "early next year."

Ecobee's line of thermostats are part of over two dozen heating and cooling controllers compatible with Apple HomeKit, also including thermostats from Elgato, Honeywell, iDevices, and Netatmo. On Apple.com, customers can buy the Ecobee3 Lite Smart Thermostat, but the company's latest iteration is the Ecobee4, which includes built-in Alexa support.

Article Link: HomeKit-Compatible Ecobee Thermostat Trialing 'Peak Relief' Money Saving Feature

 

[smithrh]

I've had an Ecobee 3 for about 6 months, and it's one of the few things in my life that I have absolutely no complaints about, only good things to say about it.

Good app, good HomeKit integration...

Nice.

 

[baddogmax]

I've been looking for something like this. Peak time rate in southern California is $.48 per kWh!

 

[jettredmont]

We have two Ecobee 3 lites in our home, and they are fantastic. But, not sure what the "peak rate" feature will really do for us. I already have a "pre-cool" comfort setting set for the hour before out 4-9 "peak electricity" schedule starts, cooling the house down an extra 5 degrees so that while the AC is off for the next five hours it still stays comfortable inside, without paying the ~2x peak electricity rates. That flexibility in scheduling is exactly why we got the ecobees in the first place, and it more than paid for itself in savings last Summer.

That said, if it can determine how cool it needs to get that pre-peak hour to stay within bounds at the end of the peak hours, that would be an improvement. And of course not having to manage extra "comfort settings" would be an improvement as well.

 

[jclardy]

I've had an Ecobee 3 for about 6 months, and it's one of the few things in my life that I have absolutely no complaints about, only good things to say about it.

Good app, good HomeKit integration...

Nice.

Same, glad I went with Ecobee over the Nest. Super easy to integrate with nearly anything because of their available API (I used it with SmartThings, and now switched it over to HomeAssistant.)

It is a bit ugly and the UI could be improved - but it has been super reliable and the extra presence/temperature sensors help a lot for keeping the temperature correct when I am working in the warmest room in the house.

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

Sweet. I'd love to try it.

They should also work with Apple on their iOS12 Home app integration. My thermostat and sensors often report "No response."

Like right now, for example.

Sometimes I can just go to the room where the thermostat is located and it will update, sometimes I have to launch the Ecobee app, and sometimes I need to completely restart. At least it doesn't prevent the thermostat from working.

 

[philipk]

Sweet. I'd love to try it.

They should also work with Apple on their iOS12 Home app integration. My thermostat and sensors often report "No response."

Like right now, for example.

Sometimes I can just go to the room where the thermostat is located and it will update, sometimes I have to launch the Ecobee app, and sometimes I need to completely restart. At least it doesn't prevent the thermostat from working.

My Ecobbee 3 has worked flawlessly. It is by far the best smart home product that I have bought. Two weeks ago it alerted by email me that I was having problems with my air conditioner before I was aware of it.

My only complaint is the same as yours with HomeKit. I strongly believe that it is a problem with Apple and not with Ecobee.

I wish Apple would get their act together and fix HomeKit. I am sticking with it but I’m somewhat disappointed. This includes locks, power outlets, lights, and other issues.

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

My Ecobbee 3 has worked flawlessly. It is by far the best smart home product that I have bought. Two weeks ago it alerted by email me that I was having problems with my air conditioner before I was aware of it.

My only complaint is the same as yours with HomeKit. I strongly believe that it is a problem with Apple and not with Ecobee.

I wish Apple would get their act together and fix HomeKit. I am sticking with it but I’m somewhat disappointed. This includes locks, power outlets, lights, and other issues.

Oh no, don't get me wrong. Aside from having to completely re-setup my 3 Lite a few times when I'd rebooted my router, it's been smooth sailing. Your comments about the locks is a reason why I haven't jumped on that one yet. My lights and single plug have worked almost flawlessly, though sometimes it seems like Hue has issues communicating with itself. Sometimes a bulb at random in a room/scene won't respond. And it changes each time I try to turn it off, lol.

 

[Dominicanyor]

I’m still waiting for HomeKit to be compatible with nest..

 

[rcooked]

I’m still waiting for HomeKit to be compatible with nest..

Ditto... won’t happen.

 

[Nunyabinez]

I agree with the previous posters, my ecobee is wonderful.

We are doing some remodeling and had flooring installed. The installers left the door open a good part of the day, and I got an email from ecobee saying that something might be wrong because the thermostat had been calling for cooling and the temperature had gone up four degrees.

Plus, it also interfaces with my Alexa network. It's not a full blown implementation, but it can listen to commands and relay them or respond to queries just like the others.

 

[mattopotamus]

I have a nest now and have been very happy, but I hear nothing but good things about the ecobee. Smart thermostats are seriously one of the best buying decisions I have made. I also regularly get credits on my power bill for sharing my nest stats with the power company.

 

[jeyf]

moved into an older home for the city neighborhood.
Installed a new boiler & evaporative cooler. The new heating/ cooling set up not compatible with any of the new thermostats and you would not really need it anyways. The boiler is the size of a milk crate and performed better than expected this January. We have had a summer of 95+ weather and just running the cooler over night gets the interior down to 60 - 75F for the day.

keeping the up grades quality simple:
concentrating on remediating all the delayed maintenance here and HomeKit is just another mouth to feed.

 

[neliason]

Sweet. I'd love to try it.

They should also work with Apple on their iOS12 Home app integration. My thermostat and sensors often report "No response."

Like right now, for example.

Sometimes I can just go to the room where the thermostat is located and it will update, sometimes I have to launch the Ecobee app, and sometimes I need to completely restart. At least it doesn't prevent the thermostat from working.

Same here for me with a IOS 11 and a ecobee 3. I find HomeKit unrealiable. Therefore for me it isn't a feature but an annoyance. But I love my ecobee otherwise.

 

[liberte1776]

YAWN! Wake me up when it comes to Illinois! I would be MUCH more interested in Ecobee adding BASIC FUNCTIONALITY TO CONTROL THE FAN SPEED WHEN *ONLY* THE FAN IS RUNNING!!! Mind boggling that this is not a supported feature, yet my system does support this with the Carrier Infinity Touch thermostat!

Had Nest before too, and it also does not control fan speed!

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

Same here for me with a IOS 11 and a ecobee 3. I find HomeKit unrealiable. Therefore for me it isn't a feature but an annoyance. But I love my ecobee otherwise.

It was fairly stable on 11 for me. Generally speaking with any device, I do the initial setup in the manufacturer's app and just run it day to day from Home.

 

[nutmac]

Sweet. I'd love to try it.

They should also work with Apple on their iOS12 Home app integration. My thermostat and sensors often report "No response."

Like right now, for example.

Sometimes I can just go to the room where the thermostat is located and it will update, sometimes I have to launch the Ecobee app, and sometimes I need to completely restart. At least it doesn't prevent the thermostat from working.

Which firmware are you running?

4.2.0.395 for ecobee4, 4.2.0.394 for ecobee3, and 4.2.0.392 for ecobee3 lite supposedly improved WiFi stack that caused connectivity issue with HomeKit.

As for me, I used to get "No Response" error until I replaced WiFi router with Eero (2nd generation).

 

[vipergts2207]

This just reaffirms my view that ecobee makes the best thermostats out there.

 

[smithrh]

It's been my experience that 6-7 months ago HomeKit wasn't that great with a lot of reproducible issues (bugs). It was very frustrating overall, but you could see the promise. I had just a couple of devices at the time.

In the last couple of months things have gotten much better. I've added quite a few devices and it's working quite well.

Still looking forward to iOS12 and automation/trigger enhancements.

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

Which firmware are you running?

4.2.0.395 for ecobee4, 4.2.0.394 for ecobee3, and 4.2.0.392 for ecobee3 lite supposedly improved WiFi stack that caused connectivity issue with HomeKit.

As for me, I used to get "No Response" error until I replaced WiFi router with Eero (2nd generation).

I'm current on my 3 Lite. I would rather not replace my router at this time, as it's an Asus RT-3100. Though there are times (since having to switch to Comca$h from FiOS) where if heavy network traffic (ie, downloading an iOS beta) is occurring, none of my HomeKit devices respond.

 

[neliason]

It was fairly stable on 11 for me. Generally speaking with any device, I do the initial setup in the manufacturer's app and just run it day to day from Home.

It was stable for me at first. But I found it useless. HomeKit would do stupid things like when I set the temperature it would change the mode from cool to auto. Plus it doesn’t do a timed hold. So changes would mess up my schedule. The new ecobee app is far more useful. So I stopped using HomeKit.

I got an Apple TV 4K and went to go check out HomeKit, since the Apple TV acts as a hub. When I did I found nothing responded. I unpaired and repaired. That didn’t work. I signed out of iCloud. That didn’t work. I unpaired and repaired and it worked again, that day. I checked it again the next and the ecobee was unresponsive. I tried rebooting it and that didn’t help. This was over a month ago. I checked today and it was working.

Between it not really helping me control my thermostat in a way that I find useful and being flaky I’ve really given up on it.

 

[H3LL5P4WN]

It was stable for me at first. But I found it useless. HomeKit would do stupid things like when I set the temperature it would change the mode from cool to auto. Plus it doesn’t do a timed hold. So changes would mess up my schedule. The new ecobee app is far more useful. So I stopped using HomeKit.

I got an Apple TV 4K and went to go check out HomeKit, since the Apple TV acts as a hub. When I did I found nothing responded. I unpaired and repaired. That didn’t work. I signed out of iCloud. That didn’t work. I unpaired and repaired and it worked again, that day. I checked it again the next and the ecobee was unresponsive. I tried rebooting it and that didn’t help. This was over a month ago. I checked today and it was working.

Between it not really helping me control my thermostat in a way that I find useful and being flaky I’ve really given up on it.

That's odd, to say the least. On the flipside, maybe I haven't experienced your overall HomeKit frustrations because I started by already having an Apple TV4.

I will say though, not having timed holds or it responding to a schedule is annoying.

 

[cerote]

I have a nest now and have been very happy, but I hear nothing but good things about the ecobee. Smart thermostats are seriously one of the best buying decisions I have made. I also regularly get credits on my power bill for sharing my nest stats with the power company.

I went with nest before ecobee. It was ok but then it just started getting worse. Moved to ecobee a couple years ago and it has been great. Much better for me.

 

[klymr]

The first home improvement project I did after buying my house in late April was replace an old Honeywell mercury blob/sliding lever style thermostat with an ecobee3. Biggest PITA ever...but at no fault of ecobee. It's a long story of how I had to replace the old wire by trying to fish a new one through a tiny hole drilled in concrete walls. Ugh.

Took a few hours (over the course of a few days), but finally got a new wire ran and I was in business. I haven't had one single problem with the thermostat since. The ecobee app is a different story though.