Effective date: 23 July 2024
dcbel Inc. and its affiliates (“dcbel,” “we,” “our,” and/or “us”) value the privacy of the individuals who use our Home Energy Stations and Home Simulator (collectively, our “Products”), mobile applications and App Hub, website, and other online services (our “Services”). This privacy policy (the “Privacy Policy”) explains how we collect, use, and disclose personal information from users of our Services (“Users”, “you”, and/or “your”). If you are located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or the United Kingdom (“UK”), “personal information” means any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual. By using our Services, you agree to the collection, use, disclosure, and procedures this Privacy Policy describes. Beyond the Privacy Policy, your use of our Services is also subject to our dcbel General Terms and Conditions
We may collect a variety of information from or about you or your devices from various sources, as described below.
If you do not provide your personal information when requested, you may not be able to use our Services if that personal information is necessary to provide you with our Services or if we are legally required to collect it.
Information You Provide to Us
Account Information. If you create an account on our Services, we ask you for personal information such as your name, address, email address, phone number, and information about your residence. We may also ask you to provide the Energy Information described below.
Reservations and Purchases. If you pre-order or purchase products through our Services, we ask for personal information such as your name, email address, phone number, billing and shipping address, and information about your residence. In addition, your payment-related information, such as your credit card or other financial information, is collected by our third-party payment processor on our behalf. We may also ask you to provide the Energy Information described below.
Communications. If you contact us directly, we may receive additional personal information about you. For example, if you contact us for customer support or communicate with us through the chat bot on our Services, we may receive your name, email address, phone number, the contents of the message and any attachments you send to us, and any other personal information you choose to provide. If you sign up for our newsletter or to receive updates, news, or other promotional information from us, we will collect certain personal information from you, such as your email address. To learn how to deliver a better customer experience and improve our Services, when we send you emails, we may use embedded pixels or other technologies to track information about your receipt of and interaction with our emails, such as whether and when you open them, whether you access any links included in them, whether you forward our emails and to whom, your Location Information (described below), and your Device Information (described below).
Your Contacts. We may provide you with the ability to invite other individuals such as friends or family to share access to your content. We will ask you for the email address of any such individuals and automatically send an email invitation on your behalf.
Energy Information. We may also ask for energy-related information such as information about your electric utility rate, electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle make/model and vehicle identification number (VIN), energy storage system, and rooftop solar system.
SHIP Application. If you apply to be a Smart Home Integration Partner (SHIP) through our Services, we ask for personal information such as your name, title, company name and website, phone number, email address, country, and zip code. We will also collect any additional personal information you choose to provide.
Information We Collect When You Use Our Services
Location Information. When you access our website, we may infer your general location information, for example, by using your internet protocol (IP) address. We also collect precise location information from users of our Products, such as during the installation and commissioning process.
Device Information. We receive information about the device and software you use to access our Services, such as your IP address, web browser type, operating system version, phone carrier and manufacturer, application installations, device identifiers, mobile advertising identifiers, and push notification tokens.
Usage Information. To help us understand how you use our Services and to help us improve them, we automatically receive information about your interactions with our Services, such as referring/exit pages, the pages or other content you view, the searches you conduct, the purchases you make, the products you consider purchasing, and the dates and times of your visits.
Information Automatically Collected from Our Products. If you have one of our Products, we automatically receive information related to your household energy consumption and production. For example, we collect information from sensors built into our Products such as time of day, instantaneous and total household loads, instantaneous and total charging loads, and instantaneous and total solar energy production. If you change settings like preferred time-of-use charging times, we will collect and use that information to learn your desired operating modes in different situations. Every time your system charges or discharges EVs or generates solar power, we collect the time and duration during which your system was on in order to offer you features such as usage history and total and net generation and consumption. In order to improve your experience over time and help troubleshoot any problem you may encounter with our Products, we may also record your unit’s model and serial number, software version, and technical information such as unit configuration.
Information from Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies. We and third-party partners collect personal information using cookies, pixel tags, SDKs, or other tracking technologies. Our third-party partners, such as analytics and advertising partners, may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across different services. Cookies are small text files containing a string of alphanumeric characters. We may use both session cookies and persistent cookies. A session cookie disappears after you close your browser. A persistent cookie remains after you close your browser and may be used by your browser on subsequent visits to our Services. Cookies can be used for performance management, collecting information on how our Services are being used for analytics purposes. They can also be used for functionality management, enabling us to make your visit more efficient by, for example, remembering language preferences, passwords, and log-in details. We may also use pixel tags and web beacons on our Services. These are tiny graphic images placed on web pages or in our emails that allow us to determine whether you have performed a specific action. Below is an overview of the types of cookies we and third parties may use to collect personal information.
Name | More Information | Retention |
|---|---|---|
Name | More Information | Retention |
|---|---|---|
sa-user-id | StackAdapt sets this cookie as a third party advertising cookie to record information about a user’s website activity, such as the pages visited and the locations viewed, to enable us to provide users with interest-based content and personalised advertisements on external websites. | 1 year |
muc_ads | Twitter sets this cookie to collect user behaviour and interaction data to optimize the website. | 1 year 1 month 4 days |
personalization_id | Twitter sets this cookie to integrate and share features for social media and also store information about how the user uses the website, for tracking and targeting. | 1 year 1 month 4 days |
_vwo_uuid_v2 | This cookie is set by Visual Website Optimiser and calculates unique traffic on a website. | 1 year |
Analytical or Performance Cookies. We also use cookies for website analytics purposes in order to operate, maintain and improve our Services. We may use our own analytics cookies or use third-party analytics providers. These providers may also collect information about your use of other websites, apps, and online resources. We also use the following analytical or performance cookies:
Name | More Information | Retention |
|---|---|---|
_gid | Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website’s performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. | 1 day |
Bcookie | LinkedIn sets this cookie to track the use of embedded services. | 1 year |
li_gc | Linkedin sets this cookie for storing visitor’s consent regarding using cookies for non-essential purposes. | 1 year |
lidc | LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. | 1 day |
Google Analytics | See: https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en-US and https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11397207?hl=en | 2 years |
Google Analytics | See: https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en-US and https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11397207?hl=en
| 2 years |
_gat_UA-* | Google Analytics sets this cookie for user behaviour tracking. | 1 minute |
_fbp | Facebook sets this cookie to store and track interactions. | 3 months |
Please review your web browser’s “Help” file to learn the proper way to modify your cookie settings, but note that modifying your cookie settings will not affect other tracking technologies we utilize. Please note that if you delete or choose not to accept cookies from the Services, you may not be able to utilize the features of the Services to their fullest potential. You can find more information about your rights and choices, and how to block the use of certain cookies in the section Your Rights and Choices below.
Information We Receive from Third Parties
Smart Home Integration Partners (SHIPs). If you receive an Ara Device from one of our SHIPs, we may receive information about you, such as your address, the location and photos of the installation, or information about your house related to the installation, from our SHIP. We use this information to validate proper installation and improve performance of our Services.
Electric Utilities. With your consent, we may receive information from your electronic utility such as your name, service address, billing information, account information, and current and historical energy usage information.
Other Third Parties. We may also receive information from our partners and other sources and combine that with the information in your account. For example, in order to offer incentive programs, we might receive information such as which of our partners offers services where you live to determine eligibility for these programs. We may also receive information such as device telemetry and usage data from third parties such as automotive partners and residential battery partners.
We may use the personal information we collect:
If you are located in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or the United Kingdom (“UK”), we only process your personal information when we have a valid “legal basis”, including as set forth below.
Authorized Users. We may provide you with the ability to enable additional authorized users to access your account. If you do so, the additional authorized users may view your information such as your name and address and control your device.
Vendors, Service Providers, and Technicians. We may disclose any information we receive with vendors, service providers, and technicians retained in connection with the provision of our Services.
Smart Home Integration Partners (SHIPs). If you receive our products from one of our SHIPs, we will disclose information such as your email address and phone number with the SHIP to help facilitate the installation and integration of our product. SHIPs may also use this information to send you promotional information about their products and services, as described below.
Business Partners. We may disclose your contact information with our business partners, such as SHIPs and developers who provide applications through our App Hub, so that they may send you promotional information about their products and services.
Analytics Partners. We use analytics services such as Google Analytics to collect and process certain analytics data. You can learn more about Google’s practices by visiting https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/.
Advertising Partners. We work with third-party advertising partners to show you ads that we think may interest you. Some of our advertising partners are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (https://optout.networkadvertising.org) or the Digital Advertising Alliance (https://optout.aboutads.info). If you do not wish to receive personalized ads, please visit their opt-out pages to learn about how you may opt out of receiving web-based personalized ads from member companies. You can access any settings offered by your mobile operating system to limit ad tracking, or you can install the AppChoices mobile app to learn more about how you may opt out of personalized ads in mobile apps.
As Required By Law and Similar Disclosures. We may access, preserve, and disclose your personal information if we believe doing so is required or appropriate to: (a) comply with law enforcement requests and legal process, such as a court order or subpoena; (b) respond to your requests; or (c) protect your, our, or others’ rights, property, or safety.
Merger, Sale, or Other Asset Transfers. We may transfer your personal information to service providers, advisors, potential transactional partners, or other third parties in connection with the consideration, negotiation, or completion of a corporate transaction in which we are acquired by or merged with another company or we sell, liquidate, or transfer all or a portion of our assets. The use of your information following any of these events will be governed by the provisions of this Privacy Policy in effect at the time the applicable information was collected.
Consent. We may also disclose your personal information with your permission.
Our Services may contain links to other websites, products, or services that we do not own or operate. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these third parties. Please be aware that this Privacy Policy does not apply to your activities on these third-party services or any information you disclose to these third parties. We encourage you to read their privacy policies before providing any information to them.
We take measures to delete your personal information or keep it in a form that does not permit identifying you when this information is no longer necessary for the purposes for which we process it, unless we are required by law to keep this information for a longer period. We generally store your personal information to our servers until you delete or edit it, or for as long as you remain a dcbel customer in order to provide you with our Services. We may also store your personal information to resolve disputes, establish legal defenses, conduct audits, pursue legitimate business purposes, enforce our agreements and comply with applicable laws. When we process personal information for our own purposes, we determine the retention period by taking into account various criteria, such as the type of Services provided to you, the nature and length of our relationship with you, possible re-enrollment with our Services, the impact on the Services we provide to you if we delete some information from or about you, and mandatory retention periods provided by law and the statute of limitations.
We make reasonable efforts to protect your personal information by using safeguards designed to improve the security of the personal information we maintain. However, as no electronic transmission or storage of information can be entirely secure, we can make no guarantees as to the security or privacy of your personal information.
We do not knowingly collect, maintain, or use personal information from children under 16 years of age, and no part of our Services is directed to children. If you learn that a child has provided us with personal information in violation of this Privacy Policy, then you may alert us at privacy@dcbel.energy.
Energy Behavior. You can delete the information on your dcbel device by resetting it to the defaults (using Reset in the Settings menu). You can access, amend or delete your personal information from our servers through the controls in your account.
Marketing Communications. You can unsubscribe from our promotional emails and newsletters via the link provided in the emails. Even if you opt out of receiving promotional messages from us, you will continue to receive administrative messages from us.
If you choose not to provide us with the personal information we collect, some features of our Services may not work as intended.
Your California Privacy Rights. If you reside in California and have provided your personal information to us, you may request information once per calendar year about our disclosures of certain categories of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. Such requests must be submitted to us in writing at privacy@dcbel.energy or our address in the “Contact Us” section, below.
Your European Privacy Rights. If you are located in the EEA or the UK, you have additional rights described below.
You may exercise these rights, as applicable, through controls in the dcbel application or by contacting us using the contact details at the end of this Privacy Policy. Before fulfilling your request, we may ask you to provide reasonable information to verify your identity. Please note that there are exceptions and limitations to each of these rights, and that while any changes you make will be reflected in active user databases instantly or within a reasonable period of time, we may retain personal information for backups, archiving, prevention of fraud and abuse, analytics, satisfaction of legal obligations, or where we otherwise reasonably believe that we have a legitimate reason to do so. Also, exercising certain of these rights, such as the right to object to the processing of your personal information, may impact your use of the Services.
How to Block Cookies. You can block cookies by setting your internet browser to block some or all cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential Cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our Services. By using our Services, you consent to our use of cookies and our processing of personal information collected through such Cookies, in accordance with this Privacy Policy. You can withdraw your consent at any time by deleting placed cookies and disabling cookies in your browser, or as explained below. You can change your browser settings to block or notify you when you receive a cookie, delete cookies or browse our Services using your browser’s anonymous usage setting. Please refer to your browser instructions or help screen to learn more about how to adjust or modify your browser settings. If you do not agree to our use of cookies or similar technologies which store information on your device, you should change your browser settings accordingly. You should understand that some features of our Services may not function properly if you do not accept cookies or these technologies. Where required by applicable law, you will be asked to consent to certain cookies and similar technologies before we use or install them on your computer or other device.
Our Services are hosted in the United States and intended for visitors located within the United States. If you choose to use the Services from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland or other regions of the world with laws governing data collection and use that may differ from U.S. law, then please note that you are transferring your personal information outside of those regions to the U.S. for storage and processing. We may transfer personal information from the EEA, the UK or Switzerland to the U.S. and other third countries based on approved Standard Contractual Clauses, or otherwise in accordance with applicable data protection laws such as based on an appropriate adequacy decision when transferring personal information to Canada. Also, we may transfer your personal information from the U.S. to other countries or regions in connection with storage and processing of personal information, fulfilling your requests, and operating the Services. By providing any information, including personal information, on or to the Services, you consent to such transfer, storage, and processing. For more information about the tools that we use to transfer personal information, you can contact us as described below.
You can update your account information or close your account through your profile settings.
We will post any adjustments to the Privacy Policy on this page, and the revised version will be effective when it is posted. If we materially change the ways in which we use or disclose personal information previously collected from you through the Services, we will notify you through the Services, by email, or other communication.
Dcbel is responsible as the data controller for processing your personal information. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about our processing activities, please email us at privacy@dcbel.energy or write to us at:
dcbel Inc.
attention: Legal Affairs
4700 de la Savane
Montreal, QC Canada H4P 1T7
