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Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

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Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#111

Post by seiferteric »

wiredfool wrote: post #105
seiferteric wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that I have seen several anti A/C articles and several pro Heat Pump articles in recent times, do you think they know these are the same things in reverse? At least A/C is often used in sunny locales were solar can be used effectively.

AC is more than 100% efficient in heating the environment. This is unfortunate, but thermodynamics will win in the long run. Heat pumps are more than 100% efficient at heating the house, which is what we want, and one of the places where we are on the same side as thermodynamics.

Fair enough, but direct heating of the environment is not of practical concern since it's effect is minuscule compared to GHG's. Point being, solar output is well correlated with A/C usage, which is a nice benefit and all that solar energy would be turned to heat anyway... so might as well have it cool your house :) Heat pump in the winter on the other hand, not so well correlated with renewables.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#112

Post by kennywinker »

saurik wrote: post #98
moralestapia wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sorry, not sorry: I'm not willing to sacrifice my comfort for the ~$10/mo incentive. Hey, but at least you don't use plastic straws, right?

Why would you expect someone who isn't willing to sacrifice their comfort for a $10/mo incentive to sacrifice their comfort for a $0/mo incentive? Deciding "I don't like this person's ethics" doesn't mean "this person is suddenly inconsistent": you need to check your knee-jerk responses :/.

Well, for one thing people will often do for free things they wouldn’t do for money. Imagine choosing between “i will pay you $10 to come to my party” and “i’m having a party, will you come?”.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#113

Post by bedast »

evanreichard wrote: post #11

Ecobee has eco+ which has "Community Energy Savings" [0]. It was just way too intrusive. It seemed to be a reactive system vs proactive. Technology Connections goes into this more [1], but I believe they should be providing a system that proactively cools when there is less demand _prior_ to an expected increase in demand. Effectively using your house as a "battery". When I had it enabled, I was _always_ too hot (in…

I have an ecobee and keep it in a fairly dumb scheduling mode. My primary use, as of now, is to integrate with home assistant so I can have data at hand to make future decisions on energy and system usage.

I tried something similar with Nest but holy crap is it a pain in the butt to integrate with home assistant, and keep the integration functioning.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#115

Post by kennywinker »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #108
wiredfool wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AC is more than 100% efficient in heating the environment. This is unfortunate, but thermodynamics will win in the long run. Heat pumps are more than 100% efficient at heating the house, which is what we want, and one of the places where we are on the same side as thermodynamics.

In the long run ACs are exactly 100% efficient at heating the environment. The extra heat is only temporarily displaced from the building being cooled, and will leak back in eventually.

There is heat generated by the system, and heat generated by the power generation used to power the system. It’s definitely not a neutral system - that’d be thermodynamically impossible ( increasing entropy without external energy)

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#116

Post by BeetleB »

ceejayoz wrote: post #83
BeetleB wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I follow. If they just want to know in advance, then they don't need to modify the temperature at all, correct?

Lowering the load helps avoid needing the more expensive short term plants from coming online. Whether you go from 76 to 78 or from 66 to 68, you’re helping avoid the burst in demand they’d get.

That's true, assuming I changed the temperature setting prior to the event, and I likely won't time it perfectly (nor would I want to).

The real thing is: These events last for hours. If what you say is true, then wouldn't altering the thermostat for a small period (e.g. 30 minutes) suffice?

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#117

Post by ctdonath »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #29
s3ctor8 wrote: post #15

If a smart thermostat is turning on at a factory set "default time", I wouldn't consider it to be doing its job of adjusting the timings based on your usage habits.

I don't know how the smart thermostat is supposed to know your behaviour unless you tell it, which means taking it off the default. I had to tell my thermostat explicitly when I wake up.

With room occupancy detection, it should start modeling likely HVAC needs - able to predict accordingly, and adjust power use & timing jitter accordingly.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#118

Post by lotsofpulp »

KoftaBob wrote: post #104
lotsofpulp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we should have a national “if it is yellow, let it mellow, if it is brown, flush it down” ad campaign.

Yeah very very few people are going to follow that, the vast majority will find the idea disgusting and not nearly beneficial enough to justify it.

Hence the educational ad campaign to inform and inspire change. It is just for the home anyway, not public restrooms.

And at the end of the day, even if the vast majority find it disgusting, increasing water/sewage prices will force the change sooner or later.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#119

Post by corrral »

asdff wrote: post #87
codazoda wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to pay for them but I do wish I had automatic windows. It would be so nice if my windows automatically opened if the temperature outside was a few degree's cooler than my house and I was in "cool" mode. If it took the wind into consideration, even better. My house cools off so nicely when I open windows on opposite sides, but I have to remember to open and close them at the appropriate times and I have t…

This is why houses had awnings 100 years ago. You could leave the window open and not worry if it rained.

They also had a bunch of other adaptations for better Summer airflow. Large, open attics with multiple windows or vents, open to the lower floors (no doors in the way), to help hot air go up and out; high ceilings (an aid, not a hindrance, to cooling, if you're not using AC); floor plans and house placement that took prevailing winds into account; larger windows for better airflow when they're open, and usually on all sides of a house, roughly symmetrically (look at modern houses, lots of them have at least one side with no windows); big, straight, end-to-end hallways to let air blow through; and so on.

AC cooling efficiency requires abandoning several of these, and others are simply not given much thought because they don't matter if you're using AC all the time anyway. Which is unfortunate, because it shrinks the parts of the year in which going AC-free with windows open is viable.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#120

Post by evanreichard »

bedast wrote: post #113
evanreichard wrote: post #11

Ecobee has eco+ which has "Community Energy Savings" [0]. It was just way too intrusive. It seemed to be a reactive system vs proactive. Technology Connections goes into this more [1], but I believe they should be providing a system that proactively cools when there is less demand _prior_ to an expected increase in demand. Effectively using your house as a "battery". When I had it enabled, I was _always_ too hot (in…

I have an ecobee and keep it in a fairly dumb scheduling mode. My primary use, as of now, is to integrate with home assistant so I can have data at hand to make future decisions on energy and system usage. I tried something similar with Nest but holy crap is it a pain in the butt to integrate with home assistant, and keep the integration functioning.

> [...] integrate with home assistant so I can have data at hand to make future decisions on energy and system usage

This is actually what I've been doing. I haven't done anything actionable with the data yet, though. Beestat [0] has some great data break downs as well.

On a similar note: My house is only a single zone and I've been manually adjusting the dampers when fall / spring come around. When I find some time, I want to try to build something that will automatically adjust the dampers based on where I am in the house to create a pseudo multi zone setup with Home Assistant.

___

[0] https://beestat.io/

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