Experiments in Peak Shifting: Using a smart outlet

Previously, we discussed using a portable battery to help shift my electricity usage more into the nightly hours. I can largely program the car, the drier and the dishwasher to work their magic in the dead of night, but I do have to make dinner, which by necessity will have to be made during peak hours from 4pm to 9 pm. A small battery can help shift that power consumption to leverage the much cheaper ultra-low overnight rate. We now take it a step further with a smart outlet, ensuring the battery is fully charged in the dead of night.

As discussed in a previous post, on the average, I only need 2.2 kWh of battery storage to power my house through the “expensive” 4-9 pm time period. For about 1k$ I can get half of that, in the form of the Echo Flo Delta 2. Sadly however, that unit can not be configured to charge in the dead of night.

Since I prefer to be asleep in the dead of night, I looked to other solutions, and for $25, found the Kasa HS103 which can do just that. After the usual circus of configuring the app, adding an account etc. I was able to configure the outlet to turn on at midnight and off at 7 am, perfect to automatically charge up my Kitchen battery at the very cheap and very green ultralow overnight rate.