If you are a Pro customer, your Community Manager account can now schedule different maximum loads at your Pro Locations. A growing number of utilities are implementing demand charges for kW during times of on-peak demand on the electrical grid. Read more in this helpful explainer from one utility: San Diego Gas and Electric. Look to your own utility bill for more information on your local utility’s policy. Many utilities also have more expensive rate plans for ratepayers that use more load over an identified limit at any given time.
Using your Community Manager account, you can now schedule load maximums at each Location based on the time of day and day of week. As a site host, this will allow you to avoid demand charges and maintain your sites at lower-cost rate plans.
To use the load management scheduler in your Pro account, take the following steps:
- Select your Location within the Locations page.
- Click on “Add Load Schedule” in the Site Load Management section.
- If this is the first time you are adding a load schedule at your selected Location, you will be asked to set a one-time default value in either kW or amps in a prompt. You may select any value but AmpUp recommends either the value previously selected using the dynamic load slider or the maximum load at the site recommended in the prompt. Note: the dynamic slider will be automatically removed after setting a default value.
- After setting the default, you will be prompted to add a maximum load schedule, or if you return to this page in the future and click on “Add Load Schedule” after a default schedule is set, a panel add a new schedule called “Add Maximum Load Schedule” will appear.
- To add a schedule, enter the name of the new schedule.
- Set the Max Load for your Location.
- Select the days of the week and time of days that the maximum load should be active.
- Click Add Schedule.
When you return to the Location page, you may add another load schedule, which is especially useful when a utility has more than one demand on-peak period. Only one schedule can be active for any day of the week and time of day. If you accidentally make a new schedule during an existing schedule, you will receive the following alert. “Another schedule has already been created for the <day and time> (Note: Ampup will identify the conflict day and time for you). Please revisit your existing schedules and edit so there is no time and day of the week in two schedules.”