
The Quantified Other: Nest And Fitbit Chase A Lucrative Side Business - RougeFemme
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/04/17/the-quantified-other-nest-and-fitbit-chase-a-lucrative-side-business
======
Jemaclus
If I understand things correctly, what they're basically saying is that the
utilities can smooth out energy consumption across the entire grid. For
instance, instead of everyone having the AC on for the first 10 minutes of
every hour, they can turn 1/6 of the ACs on for the first 10 minutes, then
turn those off and turn on the next 1/6 for the next 10 minutes, and so on. If
that's the case, then instead of a huge spike (say, 80%) at the top of the
hour and a huge dip (say, 10%) for the rest of the hour, the energy usage will
be more constant across the whole hour (25% for the whole hour).

This should, in theory, reduce utilities costs in general, which ideally would
be passed on to the consumers. And since everyone's Nest thermostat is already
turning the AC up for 10 minutes, then the consumer isn't spending/losing any
money on this -- they were already doing this, it's just at a different time
that helps the utilities companies.

I think that's what they're talking about. It sounds like a cool plan, and a
smart way for Nest to make big bucks.

~~~
Houshalter
Sounds like there could be a conflict of interest though. The power company
makes more money if people use more electricity in general.

~~~
hablahaha
True, but sometimes there really is just not enough electricity to go around.
Consider power outages due to natural disasters or even extreme load on the
grid. In Texas, we have a handful of days each summer where the grid is maxed
out in the mid-afternoons and ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)
will come on the radio begging people to conserve their usage. This kind of
product could mitigate that. There are also a lot of nuanced things that go on
with utilities that influence their decisions: the electricity markets,
regulations, issues at plants, industrial users, etc. Us sweating it out at
our individual households don't mean a lot to them in the grand scheme of
things.

------
dang
The original url [1] was mostly blogspam—that is, it was a short knock-off
drawing on some other, more original source. In such cases HN strongly prefers
the original source.

Submitters: please read what you're posting and double-check it for this.
Blogspam is usually easy to spot. Please submit the original instead.

Readers: when you know of a better, more substantive version of a story,
please alert us to it in the comments. There's too much material for
moderators to check it all, so community effort to keep the quality of the
front page up makes a big difference.

1\. [http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/18/nest-uses-its-data-to-
turn-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/18/nest-uses-its-data-to-turn-
electric-utilities-into-cash-cows/)

------
adanto6840
In Southern Nevada NVEnergy has a similar program. The program offered here is
opt-in and basically gives you a discount if you allow them to turn your
thermostat up a few degrees a few times a year on very high-demand, "Energy
Event" days, or so the marketing material reads at least.

Apparently you can even override the bump-up in temperature if you desire, but
I believe you lose some or all of the cost savings if you override it.

They even offer a similar-to-Nest thermostat, free of charge IIRC, called
"mPowered" \-- it seems to be quite similar to Nest with web-accessible
functionality, programming, etc. -- and the price point is obviously much
lower.

Good play by Nest and/or Google here IMO, especially since not sharing the
user data means the utilities continue to have to pay Nest for the ability to
interface with their devices long-term.

FWIW, I strongly suspect it would be similar to the NVEnergy program -- opt-in
only, and likely with the ability to override energy events / forced
thermostat settings. That said, very intriguing and interesting "pivot" of
sorts.

NVEnergy's mPowered -
[https://www.nvenergy.com/home/saveenergy/rebates/mpowered/in...](https://www.nvenergy.com/home/saveenergy/rebates/mpowered/index.cfm)

NVEnergy's "Cool Share" Program -
[https://www.nvenergy.com/home/saveenergy/rebates/coolshare.c...](https://www.nvenergy.com/home/saveenergy/rebates/coolshare.cfm)

PS - I opted for Nest thermostats, just so convenient and they look incredibly
cool on the wall. ;-)

~~~
masklinn
> I strongly suspect it would be similar to the NVEnergy program -- opt-in
> only, and likely with the ability to override energy events / forced
> thermostat settings.

That's what it looks like: [http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Rush-Hour-
Rewards](http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Rush-Hour-Rewards) except it
uses your temperature profile to prepare for it, so it might actually turn the
airco up earlier before "rush hour". The program is indeed advertised as opt-
in and overridable.

------
tenpoundhammer
I'm not sure if the wording is purposely dubious as to mis-lead the reader,
but it's certainly not clear.

"The company has negotiated deals with multiple energy partners in the U.S.
Some utility partners are willing to spend $30 to $50 per year and per
thermostat to be able to turn the air conditioner up when it’s a hot day. This
way, the utility can levels load on the grid. "

At first glance it would appear that the author is saying that Nest will make
your air conditioner produce more cold air on a hot day, but the following
line contradicts that.

How would it level the load to use more energy? It wouldn't.

I think the actual conclusion, is that Nest is working with energy suppliers
to increase the temperature on the thermostat, which will reduce the power
used by air conditioners, and that this occurs at peak power usage.

Which will save the nest owner money, the power company money, and make Nest
as a company some money.

Moreover, this probably occurs at an imperceptible level to the user, or is
done while they are presumably gone. Also the Nest User can turn it back down
manually if they are there and uncomfortable.

This is bad sensational reporting.

~~~
masklinn
> At first glance it would appear that the author is saying that Nest will
> make your air conditioner produce more cold air on a hot day, but the
> following line contradicts that.

The wording is odd, but "turn the air conditioner up" = "raise the trigger
temperature on air conditioning", that is lower the amount of air
conditioning. An other option is to spread up- and down- time across users so
if everybody wants 10mn of airco per hour, 16% get it in the hour's first
10mn, 16% in the next, etc… instead of everybody being on the clock.

See [http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Rush-Hour-
Rewards](http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Rush-Hour-Rewards)

------
timw0j
Does TechCrunch actually have any documented cases where Nest has connected to
a customer's thermostat and modified the settings on it? Or are they simply
talking in the realm of "we think they can probably do this"?

~~~
wmf
[http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Rush-Hour-
Rewards](http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Rush-Hour-Rewards)

~~~
cobralibre
Right, and this is a strictly opt-in scheme. Austin Energy partnered with Nest
to do this last year, offering customers an $85 rebate as an incentive to help
smooth out the spikes in energy use during hot summer afternoons. Austin
Energy had actually been doing this before with a less sexy programmable
thermostat; they also had a program in which customers would receive SMS
messages requesting that they voluntarily reduce energy usage when heavy load
was expected.

Increasing energy consumption is a real problem, both in terms of
environmental impact and in terms of the power grid itself. A solution that
mitigates these problems using attractive consumer technology without
requiring significant lifestyle adjustments on the part of those consumers is
admirably pragmatic and, in my view, most welcome.

[https://nest.com/energy-partners/austin-energy/](https://nest.com/energy-
partners/austin-energy/)

[http://kut.org/post/meet-answer-texas-air-conditioning-
issue...](http://kut.org/post/meet-answer-texas-air-conditioning-issues)

~~~
wmf
BTW, per capita energy consumption appears to have peaked in the US and some
utilities are even concerned that the combination of flat demand, increasing
efficiency, and solar could cause a "death spiral".
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Projections)
[http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/this-is-what-
the...](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/this-is-what-the-utility-
death-spiral-looks-like)
[http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Business_Strateg...](http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Business_Strategy/Utility-
death-spiral-Bull-says-Warren-Buffett-6402.html/)

------
cinquemb
I think Nest is really nailing a pain point for traditional utilities
providers and probably can be a great business model for a couple of decades,
but to me the future is going to be decentralized.

I say this because the electrical grid in the US is very old and dilapidated
and is a constant drain on capital just so that the electricity that is mostly
generated by the increasing costs of coal and petro derivatives can flow
through it; in the long run, the margins are shrinking (Nest/Google can help
slow this rate down).

On the other side, there are multitude of solar alternatives (Micro CSP,
photovoltaic, etc) that are powering places now in the US that wouldn't be
worth the cost to put on the grid; in the long run, the margins are growing.

------
rsync
We're building a new house next year.

There will be no smart / aware / cloud devices anywhere in the house. There
will be no conduit of information from infrastructure pieces out to the world,
and different systems will not be interconnected.

There will be physical switches, obvious pathways and islands of simple
function. There will be no wireless except for wifi, for computers, which can
be disabled site-wide with a single switch.

I want nothing to do with this cloud aware appliance world.

~~~
john_b
I'm amazed you're getting downvoted for an obvious and sensible set of
statements. But I guess it's easier to downvote than articulate a
counterargument.

Internet of things systems have terrible security at the moment, and what many
such systems presently amount to is people selling a portion of their privacy
and exposing themselves to security risks to save a few bucks or have some
small marginal household convenience.

~~~
dang
You're right that rsync's comment does not deserve a negative score. (I
suspect that somewhat overwrought language like "I want nothing to do with"
tends to attract downvotes from people who already disagree with the opinion
being expressed. But this is about as minor a case as you can get.)

All: when you see a substantive, civil comment that's unfairly faded out, it's
good community practice to upvote it back to par. In most cases, users already
do. But this practice is more important now that we've made some downvotes
more powerful.

When a comment has been downvoted unfairly, simply upvote it and keep your own
post focused on the topic at hand. If instead of its first sentence this one
had said "I agree", it would be a very good comment instead of a mixed bag.

A simple "I agree" or "good point" is a more effective way to pipe up for a
downvoted comment than going off-topic is. Let fair-minded users notice the
situation for themselves.

------
suprgeek
I was completely sold on the Nest - going to buy it ASAP until I saw the
following review and the related discussion:
[http://www.amazon.com/review/R1KD7Q92LDK4KK/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R1KD7Q92LDK4KK/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B009GDHYPQ)

Gave me pause. Until Google bought them out, now in the wait and watch mode.
Which direction will Google take this?

------
jessemdavis
VCharge is another startup in the Northeast working on the peak-leveling
problem: [http://vcharge-energy.com/](http://vcharge-energy.com/)

