Neat program: NYC's free battery program for window AC units

[rcjordan]

How I kept cool with NYC's free battery program for window AC units - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/how-i-kept-cool-with-nycs-free-battery-program-for-window-ac-units/

[ergophobe]

> Once connected to a local household's Wi-Fi,

I was wondering how they would turn on the battery without turning off shore power entirely.

I still don't quite understand how it works. We have an older Bluetti and a new Jackery and there is no software that lets you remotely tell it to stop pulling from shore and start pulling from storage.

Anyway, it's pretty cool and I would like to see this rolled out on a larger scale with some sort of smart meter. I would love to be able to tell the power company to shut me down during peak times in the summer and pull from my batteries (with the ability to override that shutdown if I just don't want it).

Ideally, in a real pinch, I would send 3kw of solar power into the grid and run the house of battery, but the way the backfeed protection is set up, that's not possible.