OhmConnect Could Help You Skip Your Electricity Bill for a Year

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How much do you spend each month on your electricity bill? Between blasting the AC during the summer and cranking the heat during the winter, you’re likely spending more than a thousand dollars each year just to keep your lights on.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could skip that bill — for the whole year?

Thanks to a company called OhmConnect, you might be able to.

How to Skip Your Power Bill for a Year

OhmConnect is a free service that works with all the major power companies in California to pay people for saving energy when it matters most to the power grid and the environment.

When you create an account with OhmConnect and link your utility account, you’ll get a text about once a week when a lot of people in your area are using power, asking you to cut back on your power usage for an hour. If you save energy, OhmConnect pays you cash.

Even easier: Let a smart plug do the work for you. So long as you are using less energy than usual during these OhmHours, you’ll get paid — not to mention you’ll likely see a lower power bill each month.

One couple, Michael and Tiffany Edgerle, of Bakersfield, California, was able to earn more than $1,200 in just three months using OhmConnect — enough to pay for their entire power bill for the year.

“When we hit $1,000 in less than three months, I couldn’t believe it” says Michael. “We’ve made this amount of money from something we didn’t even know about a few weeks ago!”

About half their earnings come from payments for OhmHours, and the other half comes from credits for referring people they know to the program. Michael says his family uses a smart thermostat and smart plugs to make things easy.

How to Get Started

Canceling your electricity bill isn’t an option, but making enough free money to pay it off is. Here’s how California residents who use PG&E, SDG&E or Southern California Edison can set up an account with OhmConnect.

• Sign up for a free OhmConnect account here.

1. Sync it with your online utility account through PG&E, SDG&E or Southern California Edison.
2. Receive energy usage notifications during “OhmHours” and “AutoOhms” — high-energy-consumption times that trigger non-green power plants to activate in order to support the overtaxed grid.
3. Head outside or at least turn the TV off until the OhmHour is up. If you have a smart plug connected to any of your devices, they’ll automatically shut off during these high-usage times.
4. That’s it! OhmConnect rewards you with cash for reducing your energy consumption and helping to prevent blackouts.

Enter your ZIP code here to get started saving energy and earning money. How much could you make this month?

Kari Faber is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.