
The Lowly Thermostat, Now Minter of Megawatts - jonathansizz
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527366/the-lowly-thermostat-now-minter-of-megawatts/?
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lutorm
The utilities pay Nest $25 + $15/year for each Nest owner that agrees to sign
up, while the owner gets a _one-time_ $85 rebate. Excuse me?

I'm all for helping lower peak demand, but if the utilities are going to be
saving billions, I think this should reflect an ongoing savings for the
customers, too.

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erichurkman
Don't customers also receive a benefit by having a lower utility bill?

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nostromo
It depends on which Nest feature we're talking about.

The consumer clearly benefits from not air conditioning an empty home.

But, the article conflates this with "demand response" \-- which is more about
time-shifting your electrical usage to avoid peak times than it is about
reducing your energy usage. The meter will read the same, but it's a huge
benefit to the utilities.

A simple way to fix this: price energy more expensively during peak times.

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joezydeco
Which some markets are doing.

In Chicago you can opt into a program where you pay real-time pricing for
electricity. This price can swing from 0.0c/kWh during overnight summer hours
when peaker plants need someone to burn off wattage, and I've seen it go over
$1.00/kWh during heat waves or when the south is having a freezing snap and
everyone is running their heat pumps down there. Standard users pay about
7.5c/kWh.

While the Nest doesn't connect to this pricing, ComEd also offers an optional
breaker box (connected via cellular radio) to cycle power to your A/C
compressor for short periods of time when the price exceeds a certain level
(i.e peak summer demand). So this kind of automatic control exists without
needing the Nest infrastructure in place.

In the meantime, I've saved about 15% off my standard bill with a little bit
of diligent dumb-thermostat programming. I'm planning a more intelligent
system of my own that can watch pricing, house occupancy, and weather
forecasts to try and beat that statistic.

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TheLoneWolfling
So you can end up getting charged ~13x the price if you opt-in?

No wonder it's not particularly popular.

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joezydeco
Like I said, I've saved money with the program. If you're not able or
motivated to monitor your usage and the current price then yeah, it's not
going to work.

This is where a more intelligent system than the Nest could be beneficial. I'm
not for the _power company_ modulating your use but if you had a system that
cooperated locally with your habits I think there's a lot of potential. Nest
is 50% there.

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ironchef
I'm on RRTP too. I've saved > 25% using it in the summer. In the summer (for
example), I'll crank it down to mid to low sixties overnight (it's pretty
cheap) and give it one final kick down to high fifties / low sixties just shy
of 6 am. Then set it for 76 or so for most of the day (If it's pretty hot and
the temp has drifted up I may do a mid day cooling for a short bit)....then
kick things down again at 8 pm or so. You can follow the pricing here:
[https://rrtp.comed.com/live-
prices/?date=20140522](https://rrtp.comed.com/live-prices/?date=20140522)
(that's today) or predicted next day: [https://rrtp.comed.com/live-
prices/predicted-prices/](https://rrtp.comed.com/live-prices/predicted-
prices/)

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joezydeco
Preloading the house is definitely a great trick for the hot summer days. I've
toyed with the idea of building some kind of thermal storage unit in the
basement for the really cheap periods...but it was getting kind of silly.

But if you know anyone selling a cheap commercial ice maker I'm all ears.

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masonhensley
This is cool, few years ago, I interned for the Tennessee Valley Authority on
their Energy Efficiency and Demand Response team. The bulk of our peak demand
savings came from industrial customers [1] but we did have a program for
residential users, but it was more on the general efficiency side [2].

[1] - [http://www.enernoc.com/our-resources/brochures-faq/faq-
tenne...](http://www.enernoc.com/our-resources/brochures-faq/faq-tennessee-
valley-authority-demand-response)

[2] -
[http://www.energyright.com/residential/](http://www.energyright.com/residential/)

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tomohawk
With solar on the roof, I'm putting power onto the grid during those peak
times. Maybe if they paid for more peak power, more people would put on solar,
which would provide peak output when AC is most needed.

Seems less invasive than tracking when I tend to be home or not home. Next up,
they'll track where I'm driving and only turn on the heat/AC when I appear to
be heading home. I wonder who else would find that kind of info useful.

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lutorm
Yeah it seems PV generation and AC is a good match, except that peak load
happens later than peak production since temps peak in the afternoon and AC
use goes up as people get home.

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amit_m
This indiegogo campaign launched 2 days ago is doing a "Nest for split A/Cs":
[http://igg.me/at/sensibo/x](http://igg.me/at/sensibo/x)

Hopefully they can help the rest of the world become more energy efficient.
Thermostats are not common outside the US.

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scott_karana
> Thermostats are not common outside the US.

Do you have a source backing that up? I was in Germany last summer, and they
seemed to be just as ubiquitous. (both in Berlin and Munich)

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amit_m
Just my experience. The systems you are referring to are most-likely
residential heating systems, and not full-blown HVAC system that are based on
a heat pump.

Asia: I have traveled for months in China, India and Japan and don't recall
seeing any thermostats, aside from hotels and commercial spaces.

Europe: no A/C in most countries (aside from commercial projects). They make
extensive use of residential heating using liquid pipes that pass through the
building. In southern europe split ductless A/C systems are common.

South america: I believe they have both central air and split systems.

USA: central air everywhere!

Africa: no money for A/C. ;-)

The split systems are much more energy efficient, so they should be gaining
ground.

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xtirpation
Am I missing something here? I'm genuinely curious why anyone would think it's
a good idea to surrender control over something that directly affects their
everyday comfort, especially if it's air conditioning in Texas.

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skybrian
It partially compensates by cooling the house down before peak. Also, you can
override it at any time and it will learn what you want. The point is to find
ways to cut back that don't affect comfort.

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brucehart
I can imagine a future where energy is priced in real time. The only reason it
hasn't been done so far is that it wasn't technically practical until
recently. Imagine if you could tell your Nest to optimize the comfort of your
house and keep it below a projected budget. If battery technology progresses,
the Nest could even one day store energy at low points and use the battery at
more expensive times.

~~~
tedsanders
There are many reasons it hasn't been done besides technical practicality.
Besides the obvious issues of market manipulation (ala Enron) and information
security (sending false prices to cause blackouts), there is a giant problem
with customer acceptance. Most people don't like bills that are unpredictable,
they don't like bills that are hard to understand, and they don't like change.
I'm a big fan of real-time energy pricing but you have to understand that the
technical problems are really quite minor compared to the market design and
consumer acceptance problems.

I'm also somewhat skeptical of personal batteries being used to save on your
electric bill. If it's worth it to peak-shave with batteries, it's almost
certainly going to be more effective for companies to do it at scale and with
expertise. The only reason it might make sense for consumers to do it is
because of the retail-wholesale pricing difference, but if home batteries
become popular, you can bet that loophole will be closed.

Source: I used to work at a utility

P.S. Another big problem is systems control. It is very hard to predict how
decentralized actors will work side by side. For example, you don't want to
change the price of electricity by a cent and then have 10 MW of demand
instantly come on across the state just because everyone's Nest price
threshold was hit. There are many plausible sounding solutions to this problem
(price fuzzing, delays, subpenny pricing), but they have difficult edge cases
as well.

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paulyg
I agree that there would be economies of scale to saving up energy at off peak
times for use on peak. But the only way I know of this happening on the MW
scale is pumped storage. Utility pumps water up into a reservoir all night and
then let's it back down through Hydroelectric generators the next day. But the
ability to do this is limited by geography. Maybe we are at a turning point.
The island of Ohau recently put out an RFQ for a large energy storage system.
Will be interesting to see if and who bids.

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lutorm
Maybe [http://www.lightsail.com/](http://www.lightsail.com/) ?

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NoMoreNicksLeft
Looks like most of Texas has it. Too bad I'm up in the panhandle.

