Smart energy solutions company EcoFlow is debuting Oasis, its new AI-powered Home Energy Management System, at CES in Las Vegas this week. Designed to automate and simplify energy management, Oasis features an AI assistant that can answer and even act on complicated questions about your home’s energy using natural language, such as “How can I maximize my solar energy usage today?” The company also teased the upcoming launch of Ocean Pro, a new grid-tied whole-home solar battery solution for the US it plans to launch later this year.

Energy management is a key use case for the smart home, but the infrastructure is expensive, and it can be complicated to set up and confusing to manage. With Oasis, EcoFlow is tackling at least two of those problems. 

Oasis works with EcoFlow’s home power technology to manage your home’s energy through real-time monitoring of your home’s solar energy production, energy storage to EcoFlow batteries, and energy use from third-party appliances and systems you connect to it through the EcoFlow app. 

Peter Linghu, EcoFlow’s director of product strategy and development, explained that Oasis uses predictive analytics and automations to do helpful things automatically, such as switch to backup power in the event of a power outage or charge up your batteries if there’s a big storm coming. While these are features most home battery storage systems today offer, with Oasis, EcoFlow says it’s adding a more capable software layer to provide more granular whole-home energy management.

The EcoFlow Assistant, an AI chatbot in the app, can answer questions for you, such as “How much energy did I use today?” But it can also suggest, create, and set up automations to manage energy use across your home. For example, you can ask it to set up the best power backup solution, and it will present options it can then implement (see video). Linghu says it does this by analyzing data such as past energy usage, local electric rates, home solar energy generation, and weather patterns.

Oasis can also proactively offer suggestions, such as running your air conditioning or washing machine off stored energy rather than grid power when energy prices are high. Linghu says you can instruct Oasis to automate functions like this or choose to be notified about them and implement them yourself.

Intelligent management of your home’s energy can save you energy and money without you having to run around turning off lights, fiddling with the thermostat, and unplugging the EV charger. But a big hurdle is finding a system that can talk to everything in your home and to existing infrastructure like solar panels. You also need an energy provider that offers time-of-use rates and demand response programs to get the most benefit. Additionally, many solutions today only work with proprietary equipment, making them better suited to new builds rather than retrofitting into your home. EcoFlow’s approach is more open.

Today, Oasis works with EcoFlow products such as its portable Delta 3 Plus and River 3 Plus solar generators and its whole-home backup solution. Currently, that includes the Smart Home Panel 2, which offers circuit-level management of electrical loads and can be connected to your existing electrical panel. It can also work with the portable Delta Pro Ultra as a battery backup system.

The new EcoFlow Ocean Pro system that’s coming to the US later this year will bring a higher-capacity grid-tied option for whole-home backup. EcoFlow hasn’t provided many details but says it’s similar to EcoFlow’s PowerOcean system, which is available in Europe. It looks like it will be a direct competitor to popular products in this space, such as the Tesla Powerwall and Anker Solix.

Oasis also works with third-party devices such as Ecobee and Nest thermostats, energy-monitoring products like smart plugs from Shelly and TP-Link, as well as any Matter-compatible device. While Matter is still in its early stages when it comes to energy management, high-energy use devices like appliances, heat pumps, solar panels, and EV charging equipment are now part of the Matter specification. So, there may soon be more products that can integrate directly with Oasis. All this helps bring more devices into the system to get a clear picture of your home’s energy use.

Several other companies are working on this type of home energy management solution. Schneider launched its Schneider Home system at CES last year; Savant Power, Anker Solix, and Generac also have interesting products in this space. The initial cost is still a major roadblock for many people, but if the complexity can be reduced through intelligent home energy management software, that feels like a big step in the right direction.

An alliance of grassroots environmental groups could lose $60 million in federal funding after calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) was named one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “grantmakers” more than a year ago, putting it in charge of distributing subgrants for locally led environmental projects. But out of 11 of the EPA’s grantmakers, the CJA is the only one that has yet to receive any funding. The group has faced a barrage of attacks for publicly opposing the Israel-Hamas war, and some EPA staffers say the group has been singled out as a result.

“We have been deeply disappointed to witness EPA’s current withholding of $60 million to the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), the only one of the eleven grantees that courageously spoke out against the environmental toll and human rights violations in Palestine,” a group of anonymous EPA and Department of Energy employees wrote in an open letter in December.

The money could disappear if it isn’t dispersed before President-elect Donald Trump steps into office. Trump has said he would rescind unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act that set aside money for the grants. And if his second term is anything like his first, he’s likely to gut the EPA and roll back environmental protections.

With a deregulatory agenda at the national level, local efforts become even more crucial to safeguarding Americans’ air, water, and climate. It’s those kinds of grassroots initiatives that the EPA’s grantmakers are supposed to support and what’s at risk if the agency doesn’t disburse the funds before it’s too late.

“What this would do is further strip away funds that our communities have been counting on,” says CJA executive director KD Chavez. “We need people to be resourced so that at least on a local level they can do clean up projects, they can have air quality monitoring,” Chavez says, citing examples of how the money might be used.

Money for the EPA’s Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program came from the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $369 billion for clean energy and climate action. The 11 grantmakers include universities and nonprofit organizations charged with doling out a total of $600 million to locally led environmental projects.

That was supposed to make it easier for smaller grassroots groups to access funding, especially those living with the most pollution, which are often communities of color in the United States. The CJA includes around 100 organizations across the US, many of them rooted in communities of color like the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program and the Indigenous Environmental Network.

The CJA, in particular, was chosen to distribute subgrants to EPA regions 8–10, which encompass most of the Western US. It’s also the national grantmaker responsible for outreach to tribal communities. The CJA says it has already spent $1.6 million from its own operational budget to get the organizational infrastructure in place needed to allow community groups to apply for subgrants. It’s supposed to receive $50 million for those subgrants, plus an additional $10 million for technical capacity.

As of January 3rd, only $461 million of the funding from the grantmaking program had been awarded, according to data on the EPA website, leaving the rest of the funds vulnerable to the incoming Trump administration.

“There are questions we have about the singling out of us as an organization. Why have we been singled out as anti-American? Is it because we’re led by working class people, Black Indigenous, and people of color communities?” Chavez says.

Over the past year, conservative media and some Republican lawmakers have accused the CJA of being “radicals,” antisemitic, and “Anti-American” for its stance on the Israel-Hamas war. Even before the EPA announced its selection of 11 grantmakers, the CJA had released a statement in October 2023 calling on President Joe Biden and Congress to demand a ceasefire by Israel and Hamas.

“I was surprised to learn that $50 million has been designated for Climate Justice Alliance, a group which explicitly publishes a ‘free Palestine’ section on its website. On the website, there are dozens of antisemitic and alarming images,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said to former EPA administrator Michael Regan when he testified before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in July of last year. (Regan stepped down from his post in December.)

The CJA has published its ceasefire statement on its website. “We call on Biden and the US Congress to support an immediate end to the violence by publicly demanding a ceasefire within the region. We stand firmly on the side of peace and support the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, decolonization and life,” the statement says.

“At our core CJA has always been anti war and pro communities,” Chavez says. “We are just collateral damage in a war against regulations,” they add.

The group has also caught flak for its environmental advocacy. A letter from Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Buddy Carter (R-GA) to Regan last May accuses the CJA of supporting “partisan, and in some cases extreme, environmental activism” including “mass organization of climate alarmism protests” and the “litigation of fossil fuel projects.” The letter similarly castigates other grantmakers chosen by the EPA, but the CJA has faced more heat as protests in the US against the war in Gaza gained momentum.

The letter published by EPA and DOE staffers last month (first reported on by The Intercept) urges the agencies to “end their collaboration with Israel until there is a permanent ceasefire” and “release all designated federal funds to Climate Justice Alliance.” It says the funding is needed for Indigenous communities and other groups that have historically been “left out” of environmental protections.

According to Chavez, the EPA told the CJA in a meeting in September that it was under investigation by the agency’s office of general counsel (OGC) without any explanation as to why. The group says the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights then told the group to expect funding by January 6th — even though grantmakers were initially anticipated to be able to start doling out subgrants in the summer of 2024.

The EPA didn’t verify the CJA’s claims or answer specific questions from The Verge about an investigation into the CJA. “EPA continues to review the grant for the Climate Justice Alliance,” EPA spokesperson Nick Conger said in an email to The Verge. “EPA continues to work through its rigorous process to obligate the funds under the Inflation Reduction Act, including the Thriving Communities Grantmakers program.” The agency is “on track” to award more than 90 percent of the funding by the end of the Biden administration, Conger added.

When The Verge asked the EPA last year how it chose grantmakers for the program, Regan said in a call with reporters that they each “demonstrated a very strong governance structure that creates accountability” and that the agency selected the 11 “knowing that they would be able to operationalize these resources in a way that the communities that need these resources the most would absolutely get them.”