Ting was created with one clear goal in mind: to help prevent electrical fires in homes. For most homeowners, that’s the reason why they decided to get Ting! But did you know your Ting sensor can also alert you to lightning nearby, provide valuable power grid information to help prevent catastrophes, and even help you stop your pipes from freezing?
The sophisticated technology inside each Ting sensor has been proven to prevent 4 out of 5 electrical fires. That same innovative technology has paved the way for many additional capabilities that make Ting homes smarter than ever.
Here are 5 things you may not know Ting can do in addition to helping prevent electrical fires.
#1: Ting Can Detect Lightning
Thunderstorms are dazzling but dangerous. The science of lightning is quite similar to the arcing signals that Ting detects. This allows your Ting sensor to detect the invisible impulses that travel through the air when lightning strikes nearby.
Ting Tip: During the next storm, from a safe location inside, open your Ting Sensor app and click on the Real-time tab in the bottom menu. Watch the Hi-Fi graph – it will spike as the sky flashes!
Ting can also detect and alert you if your home is affected by nearby lightning strikes, which can cause voltage spikes that damage appliances and devices in the home.
“I never realized that the voltage varied so much with short peaks and lows. This thing is neat! One evening during a storm with lightning and wind, the flickering increased. I checked the app and sure enough, Ting alerted me to the problem – the power was surging between 105 and 145 volts. I contacted my utility provider and they found an issue with the neutral connection. THANK YOU Ting!”
– Richard S. in White Lake, MI
#2: Ting Can Alert You to Community Power Outages
While Ting monitors your home’s electrical system for hazardous arcing, it also monitors power quality and provides real-time notifications of power outages, power surges, and brownouts that could cause damage to appliances and electronics in your home.
When your house loses power, have you ever looked out the window to see if your neighbors lost power too? If there are other Ting sensors in your area, there’s no need to go peeking! Ting provides Community alerts so you know if your whole neighborhood is affected.
“We love Ting! It’s already helped answer a question – ‘why did the power go out just now?’ I got an alert from Ting that there was a community power outage affecting 5 homes near and including us! We were then notified by Ting that the power had been restored with no problems. How great is that? We feel safer because of this technology.”
– Cheryl B. in Honey Brook, PA
#3: Ting Can Notify You of Severe Weather Alerts
The weather is a key factor in the health of your home’s electrical system. High winds, extreme rain, lightning, and flooding caused by storms and tornadoes can damage your home’s utility equipment and even start a fire.
If severe weather is impacting your area, Ting provides real-time Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado warnings that could impact your home so you can stay in-the-know whether you’re home or away.
#4: Ting Can Monitor for Faults Across the Entire US Power Grid
With over 750,000 sensors across the country, the network effect of Ting-protected homes allows Ting to detect malfunctions that happen throughout the entire U.S. grid, including widespread surges and brownouts, the impact of extreme weather, and failing utility equipment. On a large scale, this can allow for earlier detection and prevention of disasters such as wildfires caused by grid faults, and on a small scale this can allow you to be more informed and safer in your home with Ting on the job.
You can check out our Consumer Power Quality Index map to check how resilient your utility provider’s power quality is and our live grid events feed to stay up-to-date.
“After a storm, we had some weird power fluctuations. Then I got a Ting notification that we had a fire risk at our house since the power was nearly 140 volts instead of the proper 120 volts. I called my power company and they immediately came out and they found a bad transformer. ALL MY NEIGHBORS on that grid were getting 140 volts. Bad for appliances, wiring, and clear fire risk. No one would have known without Ting.”
– Ric B. in Henrico, VA
#5: Ting Can Help Prevent Pipes from Freezing
Cracked or burst pipes during freezing winter temperatures can cause serious water damage to your home. Your Ting sensor contains a temperature sensor and can send low-temperature warnings if the ambient temperature inside your home where the sensor is installed is at risk. These notifications can be controlled in your Ting Sensor app settings.
Ting Tip: You can find this and other types of notifications settings in your app. Open your Ting Sensor app, open the menu in the top left corner, select Settings, and scroll to the Communications section to explore your weather, temperature, and other important Ting notifications.
Ting alerted me that the temperature sensor had dropped to 43 degrees. I logged into my smart thermostat account to discover that instead of going into Eco mode, it had turned off. I was able to remotely turn it back on and get things under control. But, without the alert from Ting, there is no way I would have known the heat had shut off. With temps getting ready to drop to near zero, it could have been ugly. The main goal in getting Ting was to identify electrical issues that could end up causing a fire. It sure wasn’t to prevent broken pipes from freezing temps in my house!
– Steve Y. in Vestavia, AL
Fire prevention is at the heart of Ting – our focus is to save lives and better protect families from the devastation of electrical fires. But Ting also helps you be better informed of your home’s electrical system, how the environment affects it, and the power being delivered to you. A smarter home is a safer home.