Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
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Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
1–10 of 226 posts
Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
#2It's a well known problem, so I'm surprised no one thought about it ahead of time
Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
#3How is this different from a regular timer thermostat which turns on exactly at the set time?
Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
#4Smart thermometer manufacturers could solve this fairly easily by randomizing the start time. Instead of them all turning on the heater in the winter at 6am, they could i.e pick a random start time between 5:30-6:30 by default.
Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
#5It's a well known problem, so I'm surprised no one thought about it ahead of time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
There's also the semi-mythical "Super Bowl Flush" https://news.arizona.edu/story/super-bowls-super-flush-just-...
Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
#6How is this different from a regular timer thermostat which turns on exactly at the set time?
I believe the smart thermostats are all synchronized with NTP servers and are able to much more precisely coordinate their activities as a side-effect.
Non-smart thermostats (even digital ones) usually drift on the clock settings substantially over time.
Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
#7It's a well known problem, so I'm surprised no one thought about it ahead of time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
It does seem like there are a few details that are different, because the thermostats will put sustained load on the grid, whereas the TV pickup will not. That means that a couple of nice technical solutions like adding jitter to the startup times would solve the pickup problem, but not the increased load at 6:00 AM.
Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
#8How is this different from a regular timer thermostat which turns on exactly at the set time?
It isn’t. The dumb timer thermostat my parents had in the 90s would, if widely installed, cause the exact same synchronized load problem.
Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
#9How is this different from a regular timer thermostat which turns on exactly at the set time?
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Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids
#10Related discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32088558