
Is a Nest worth the money? - benackles
http://developdaly.com/general/is-a-nest-worth-the-money/
======
dsr_
Oy. The unit of heating/cooling temperature comparison is the degree-day, not
the average temperature of the month.

For each time period, take the difference from your desired temperature. If
you have an acceptable range, take the difference from the near edge of that
range.

e.g. with a desired range 65-75, a 40 degree day counts as negative 25 and a
90 degree day counts as positive 15.

Keep track separately of positive and negative.

Now you have a record of how much you needed to cool or heat. Local newspapers
-- remember those? -- will usually keep track for you on their weather page.

That's a suitable basis for comparison. Not monthly average temperature, not
average high, not average low.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>Now you have a record of how much you needed to cool or heat. Local
newspapers -- remember those? -- will usually keep track for you on their
weather page

Yahoo! has a great free weather API with historical data, as does NOAA.

~~~
adestefan
And Weather Underground

~~~
SEJeff
Yeah WU is def not free!

------
fsckin
In Texas, companies give away Nests [0][1] to lure customers, thanks to the
deregulated market. Competition is so healthy, they are even trying to capture
'green' customers who use less.

[0] [http://www.greenmountain.com/nest](http://www.greenmountain.com/nest)

[1] [http://www.reliant.com/nest‎](http://www.reliant.com/nest‎)

~~~
pxlpshr
Thanks for pointing this out. Many people think we're a "yeehaw" state, but we
have more wind farms than California to the tune of 2x more [1] thanks to oil
money. I guess you can say cowboys like their texas tea, lower taxes, and
greener pastures.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_farm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_farm)

~~~
wozniacki
Californian cities are making it awfully difficult to resist the appeal of
places like Austin.

The dysfunction in government and the general unfriendliness to the upwardly
mobile is appalling.

California neither benefits from the good Puritan economic sense seen in New
England states nor the thrift of good-governance states like Montana.

Yes, Montana ! :

 _For six years it has been one of the only states in America with a budget
surplus: this year it is a record $433 million, proportionally equivalent to a
federal surplus of $858 billion. Thus we’ve been able to cut taxes, invest in
education and infrastructure and keep essential services intact. We recently
got our first bond rating upgrade in 26 years.

And we’re not simply riding the Western energy boom. The recession has driven
unemployment to 7.5 percent, and while we’ve had a great run with oil, coal
and gas, royalties from these commodities account for only 9 percent of our
budget surplus.

How do we accomplish what most states and the federal government cannot? I
like to say we run government like a ranch. In ranching — my old job — you
either pinch pennies or go belly-up. We do the same in government. Perhaps
Washington can try it.

For one thing, we challenge every expense. If it isn’t absolutely necessary,
we eliminate it. When the recession came we found $80 million in savings,
which helped us avert a budget crisis. Little things added up: we renegotiated
state contracts, cut our energy consumption by 20 percent, auctioned off state
vehicles and canceled building projects and computer upgrades._

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/cutting-costs-
the-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/cutting-costs-the-montana-
way.html?pagewanted=print)

California is not just a weird cesspool of the quixotic and the inept.

It is quixotic and inept for solely the sake of being so.

(If you didn't notice, someone already down-voted your entry. I expect the
same of mine.)

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>>For six years it has been one of the only states in America with a budget
surplus.

Another state with a hefty surplus? Why Texas of course. It went from budget
shortfall to a surplus in a few years:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/texas-budget-surplus-
pr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/texas-budget-surplus-proves-as-
contentious-as-a-previous-shortfall.html?_r=0)

"A boom in revenues from sales taxes as well as taxes from oil and natural gas
production have given Texas a budget surplus that the state comptroller has
estimated at $8.8 billion."

And of course California is bleeding companies and jobs. No wonder its on the
verge of bankruptcy:

[http://www.kcra.com/news/Two-dozen-companies-commit-to-
leavi...](http://www.kcra.com/news/Two-dozen-companies-commit-to-leaving-
California/-/11797728/18533954/-/item/0/-/n079fx/-/index.html)

"I tracked for 2011, that 254 companies of all sizes and shapes and kinds left
the state for primarily other states,” said Vranich, the president of Spectrum
Location Services in Irvine."

------
Terretta
Depends on the property.

In a oil burning boiler property with 8 baseboard zones and 8 Nest units, it
saved me a thousand dollars a month all winter. Paid for itself the first
winter.

Previous thermostats were programmable "eco" models that I kept programmed and
used away/vacation modes on.

Savings was from being able to see on/off cycles for all 8 zones to better
balance them, so boiler was on less overall.

I've recommended them to others and use one in a loft as well. Every
installation is saving at least 10%.

------
AaronBBrown
He's confusing kilowatts with kilowatt hours? They mean very different things.
kW is a rate (kilojoules/sec) of usage (power). kWh a stackable amount (in the
sense that you can stack money) of energy and is what the electric company
charges you for. A basic mistake like this makes me question the validity of
the results.

I'm in the market for 3 new thermostats and was hoping this article would help
me with my decision. Presently, I'm leaning toward an Ecobees
([https://www.ecobee.com/](https://www.ecobee.com/)) thermostat which has a
lot more features than the Nest and even has an API. It seems to be the
Android of the thermostat world where Nest is the iPhone. Features vs polish.

~~~
acchow
Yeah, he probably doesn't understand the difference between kW vs. kWh, but
it's not necessary to figure out how much money you've saved.

------
robomartin
Nope, it's not worth it. And this data does not prove it is.

I need to know everything about the conditions prior to installing a Nest. In
particular, I need to know about the thermostat and, if programmable, how it
was programmed. I also need to know about living patterns. Did anything
change? Was the programmed temperature higher in the summer and lower in the
winter with Nest or was it set to about the same conditions?

In terms of energy efficiency. How is the house insulated? Can you add
insulation to the walls or attic? Are the windows double-insulated? Do you use
a whole house fan in the summer to cool the house at night? Do you have a
multiple zone system so you don't have to heat or cool the entire house when
you spend all day in, let's say, an office or the kitchen? Is it a two story
home? Do you push hot air down in the winter in order to equalize the
temperature? Do you have attic ventilators?

I see Nest as more of a neat gizmo with lots of marketing behind it than a
real solution to a real problem. To be sure, the real solution requires a lot
more work than bolting a piece of slick looking electronics to a wall. The
payoff from a real solution would almost certainly be far greater and it
doesn't have to cost a lot of money. For example, I use a $200 fan to cool my
home at night (taking advantage of my local conditions). We have probably used
the air conditioner a grand total of four weeks in the last three years. The
savings in three years are already in the thousands and the investment was
$200.

~~~
mikeash
If you're comparing against an ideal savings regime, I imagine it's not worth
it. However, in my case, I was always putting off figuring out how to program
my thermostats, deciding it was too much trouble to adjust them, etc. Against
that, I expect the Nest to pay off fairly quickly.

~~~
rschmitty
Programming a $15 thermostat from Lowes/HD is not hard, even remotely.
Definitely not hard for HN readership.

~~~
threeseed
Sure if your time is worthless.

But given that the average contract developer is charging themselves out at
$100/hour investing the time to "program a thermostat" will rarely result in a
ROI.

~~~
rschmitty
So do you hire someone from your cable company to program your DVR as well?

~~~
mikeash
Someone from my what to program my what?

------
jfb
If it prevented me from punching the wall next to the godawful current Carrier
thermostat, it would be cheap at twice the price.

~~~
flomo
Meanwhile, my father had mastered the old VCR-style programmable thermostats,
but he doesn't really 'get' the Nest I gave him. Too high-tech and automatic
for him. But, Mom likes changing the temperature from her iPad.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I see a vision of all our futures. Cranky old tech guy and hot-flashing old
woman spend retirement in hacking war to set the indoor temperature with their
phones/tablets/whatever we're using in a decade or two.

~~~
at-fates-hands
Thank you for the wonderful visual. This is the funniest thing I've read today
and made me laugh pretty hard.

------
JesseObrien
For me, it made a larger difference in my awareness of how much energy I
actually use. Before nest I simply programmed my thermostat once and never
touched it again because of the pain. Now I consciously adjust the temperature
throughout the day from my desktop or phone. Just being able to walk out the
door and turn the temp down from my phone if I'm suddenly not going to be home
for a while is savings enough for me. I'm sure there are other thermostats
that do the same thing but nest has done their advertising right and their
interface/product design is top notch.

------
trimbo
I think it would be worth looking at this using "degree days". (Degree day
stats from Wunderground, I eyeballed his KW since no firm numbers are
provided).

* August 2011 vs. August 2012: 809 cooling degree days vs. 594 (1.36x). 2100 KW vs. 1500 (1.4x)

* January 2012 vs. January 2013: 544 heating degree days vs. 595 (0.91). 3000 KW vs. 2000 (1.5x)

So accounting for the weather with "degree days", with A/C it looks like there
was no savings, but with heat it made a massive difference.

------
jeffwidman
There is also the "poor man's nest" \- the Filtrete 3M 50 which is $89 on Ebay
and fully wifi supported with a well-documented API and fantastic Android app:

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R1.TR11.TRC1.A0.Xfiltret&_nkw=filtrete+3m50&_sacat=0&_from=R40)

------
rainsford
I'm not sure looking at the pure money saving in terms of lower energy is the
way to go, since a lot of the benefits are more intangible than that. The
ability to detect when you're away, automatic scheduling and easy control from
a smartphone are pretty big benefits for me but they'd be hard to quantify in
terms of being "worth it".

As others have pointed out, you can achieve a lot of that with other (cheaper)
products. But to be honest, I think Nest's main strength is making the
features easy and fun to use rather than having totally revolutionary new
features. But that's the Android and Iphone claim to fame in the smartphone
world, and they did OK ;)

------
conductr
This needs to be correlated to the weather/temperature pattern of the two
years since the nest is on your HVAC. Much of the US has had a milder summer
and winter than the previous year; it may be the same for you.

------
matthew-wegner
I live alone in a house, in Phoenix. I use pynest to set my Nest to "Away"
when my iPhone leaves the network (I just ping it constantly from a script).

My power bill is a _lot_ less than it was pre-Nest, and it requires no effort.
Accessing the Nest when I'm about to head home is a nice benefit, too, to get
the house cool before my iPhone is detected again.

(I have a sporadic schedule so the auto-away feature wouldn't work for me).

------
SpikeDad
I had a Nest early since I preordered it. Unfortunately it just died so I'm
not the happiest person.

But, over the 1.5 years I had it I saved about 3% from previous years with a
dumb thermostat. This doesn't recoup the cost at all.

One reason the savings was so low was that the firmware on the Nest was very
inadequate during the 1st year. It didn't even do automatic heating/cooling on
a schedule. All that was resolved last year.

The other reason is that the Home/Away detection is worthless for me (and I
suspect many folks) because the thermostat location isn't in the traffic
pattern of the house. I've pleaded with them to do a remote sensor but so far
they don't care. Most of the new modern wireless system have the ability to
add remote sensors so they're being left behind quickly.

Even so I'm not disappointed in the Nest. It's cool and I am very pleased to
have wireless access via my smartphone to the temperature settings.

But they need to do a lot a work to get back to the level of companies like
Honeywell and their distributed system.

------
astangl
The failure stories I have heard convince me these are not fail-safe devices.
If the thing shuts down in the winter and doesn't restart correctly, and you
are away, you could come back to frozen/burst pipes. (Probably hasn't happened
yet, but the failures have happened, so it's likely just a matter of time.)

So I would only use one of these paired with a conventional thermostat serving
as a safety net, in case the Nest fails. But then I resent having to
compensate for a manufacturer that cannot be bothered to build the failsafe
into their own product in the first place.

------
eyeareque
I live in an area where you rarely need air conditioning. Many homes around me
do not even have them. However we do need heating from about November to about
April, but it rarely does get below freezing. With that said my power bill is
about 50/month for gas and electricity. I really didn't need a Nest, but it is
certainly a fun tech toy to have. Being able to remotely turn on my heat or AC
remotely is pretty nice when you want you're on your way home. So even if I
don't make back the $249 that I spent, I still feel that it is worth the
money.

------
brandon272
I believe the "auto away" detection feature on our Nest has made the biggest
impact on our energy bill. Nowhere close to what the OP is saving, but I'd bet
it's in the $50/year range.

------
Jack000
The real selling point is the aesthetics. That's why I bought it anyways.

The self-learning scheduler is nice, but I could easily program a manual one
in a few minutes.

------
saddino
If, worth = "love the convenience of a wi-fi enabled device that can be
controlled by my phone and looks hella cool" then, yes...yes it is.

------
mrtron
Feels like a tipping point for Nest. Someone like this could be the next
Apple.

I feel strongly a few of these Internet enabled devices will pave the way for
a new industry. Imagine Nest being purchased by every household (like the
iPod) and then moving on to other products.

At some point it feels like they could charge a subscription. Would you take a
free device and pay them 10$ of your 30$/month savings?

~~~
aguest
You should take a look and see who the founder of Nest is. You may have hit
the nail on the head without knowing it.

------
beachstartup
i'm sorry, am i missing something here...? what exactly is wrong with paying
$250 for a very nice piece of technology with a great user interface?

is this just a symptom of their chosen marketing strategy (saves you money!)?

------
shanselman
No, it's not. It's fun, and a great experience, and it's a joy, but it's not
saved me any money.

------
corresation
It is very unlikely that this is accurate, or there are substantial externals
that are not being accounted for (e.g. stopping using a desktop as much as a
tablet gets heavy usage) -- the difference between 2012-01-01 and 2013-01-01
is just _way_ beyond what even the biggest Nest hyper claims.

Outside of savings that grossly exceed even the best expectations, when
questioned whether they used a programmable thermostat already (the absolute
bog standard $20 variety automatically dropping the temperature in a manner
that is close to optimal for about 95% of people), the author gave a very
wishy-washy answer that didn't actually answer the question.

~~~
MrFoof
I've been a Nest user since nearly Day 1, and about 19 months now overall. At
this point I've probably recouped about 80% of the price of the thermostat,
with my electric bill reduced by about $10-11/month ($55-65/mo to $45-55/mo)
for a 725 sqft luxury apartment.

I should probably write a blog post with all the details, but here's my take:

* I have a south-facing apartment with about 110-square feet of window glass. It heats up like a sonofa in the morning. I was able to counter this by setting a warmer limit for cooling in the summer. The blinds were always correctly set every evening to minimize summer cooling and winter heating.

* The leaf stuck out at me. I always wondered "why can't I get the leaf with my setting -- what do I have to adjust it to to get the leaf to appear?" This resulted in behavioral changes such as wearing different clothes, and taking better advantage of the windows to make getting the leaf to appear achievable.

* Once I hit the leaf, I then looked into other ways to maintain comfort, particularly in the summer. I've since invested in a fan to eliminate the envelope of heat that surrounds my body. Running the fan 20 hours a day is equivalent to running the A/C for 20-25 minutes, which is a big savings if I can eliminate 2.5 to 3 hours of A/C usage a day (at 18.5 cents/kWh).

With the addition of the fan, and finally finding some LED light bulbs with
the right lens type and color temp (to replace some halogens in the track
lighting), my electric bill was $42 for July, despite the ridiculous northeast
heat wave. Despite constant 90+ degree temperatures and high humidity, I was
able to get by with about 1 hour and 15 minutes of A/C a day, and didn't feel
bad about it.

~~~
sliverstorm
Of course, you don't need a Nest to learn to change your habits. Just stop
using the HVAC, and you'll come up with alternatives. In my case, a mixture of
fan usage and blinds/window usage.

~~~
YokoZar
If the nest is what makes it fun and simple enough to change the habits, it's
entirely reasonable to say the nest caused them. Maybe most of the value of
the nest comes from behavior modification rather than more precise temperature
control. But even so, that's still value.

~~~
MikeCapone
Exactly. It's like how the LCD with the real-time and historical fuel economy
info in the Prius has been teaching people to drive more efficiently via the
instant feedback you might not get in most other vehicles.

It's easy to say you could achieve the same thing without it, but facts show
most people don't.

~~~
corresation
Many, many vehicles have real-time fuel-usage meters. Most people completely
ignore them. The people who care about fuel-usage -- the sort of person who
buys a Prius -- of course pay attention to it because it justifies the reason
to buy the car.

Yet I suspect that very few of the people who bought the Nest actually care
about energy usage, or reducing it. It is a lifestyle product and is a talking
point, and while there are some who really desire it for that, many more set
it to a static temperature and forget it. I hugely doubt that the total set of
Nest users have seen any measurable decline in usage.

~~~
taeric
Isn't there a huge difference between the meter that the Prius has and the
typical "real time" fuel meter. In particular, it is difficult to see how
instant readings contribute to long term averages.

