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Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

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Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#141

Post by gedy »

namecheapTA wrote: post #128
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?

The plastic straw thing confuses me. I'd like someone to explain to me how anything besides the random runaway straw gets into the ocean. I live 60 miles from the ocean. We're people throwing them into storm drains that flow to the delta that flow to the ocean? We're people in San Francisco traveling to the beach and throwing them into the ocean? Couldn't we focus on not littering instead of legislating things like s…

Plastic trash is mostly from a few sources in Asia. China and Indonesia iirc.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#142

Post by TeeMassive »

I work on a project where we design devices that offload certain power intensive devices from the local grid when the current is getting too close to the power limit of the transformer's limit so they don't have to send someone in the field every time.

We have a minimum 15 minutes delay before powering back on a device that was powered off.

I've raised the issue where there could be a problem where there might be a ressonance effect with our devices and similar smart grid devices from other sources due to the 15 and n x 5 minutes delay being ubiquitous.

For now we came to the conclusion that this not an issue, but I still think this is an easily avoidable catastrophe that can be easily mitigated by adding a random offset to the delay.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#143

Post by mrguyorama »

tguvot wrote: post #85
mrguyorama wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can feel that your walls are warm I don't think that's good enough insulation. The whole house fan solution is great though.

i have walls insulated according to california build code. it's not really possible to add more insulation to them, unless you rip them off and do spray in insulation. insulated attic with radiant barrier and insulated floors. i just checked with IR camera, most of surfaces in the house are now 22C-24C. After a few days of 40+C walls ill go to 25-26. some walls (south side of house) even higher. There are few little…

Do you have any actual numbers for what is up to code insulation in California? California is a very temperate climate. I wouldn't exactly expect their code to have the highest insulation requirements.

Also, building codes should be considered the minimum.

I am keenly aware of how much thermal mass walls hold. My apartment is 3 external walls that are constructed pretty much only of a few inches of concrete, bare. The result is that after a full day of summer sun, even though it drops to 64 degrees outside at night, my air conditioner cannot keep it 76 degrees or lower inside. It's crazy. It's worse in the winter when I can feel the walls sucking heat out of my apartment.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#144

Post by mcronce »

baxtr wrote: post #110
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?

Someone who works at a bar told me recently that they “discovered” long tubular pasta (forgot the exact name) to be the best organic straws. PS: You’re welcome.

The bar I frequent uses straws made of biodegradable material derived from sugarcane - they last a lot longer than paper straws, but ultimately are water soluble and will dissolve after a day ish if submerged. They obviously cost a lot more than plastic, but the user experience is just as good without the forever waste.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#145

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Keep morning clothes on an electric blanket with a smart plug timed to turn on before you wake up. Get out of bed and put on piping-hot pants. Timer on your coffee maker makes either coffee or tea (put tea bags in the coffee pot) as you wake up. Make a hot breakfast in the microwave (oatmeal for me). No need for a thermostat change for hours.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#146

Post by gedy »

giarc wrote: post #138
LazyMans wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict in certain areas, "free cooling" systems will become the standard. These are system which do just what you talk about automatically. When there is a need for cooling and exterior air is cool enough, supplement supply air with air from the outside. This way your AC system load is reduced, or if cool enough, the compressor doesn't need to run at all to remove heat from your home by replacing it with cooler ai…

I wish I had a system like that and have thought about it a lot. I live in Calgary and today will be 28C and it will go down to 12C at night. I wish my system could just run a fan at 7am and draw in a ton of cool air to cool the house. Instead my AC runs for 30 minutes or whatever. Seems like a waste.

I'm working towards that with my Home Assistant installation, using inside and outside thermometers. You can trigger the fan based on the appropriate parameters, time of day, temps, etc.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#147

Post by tguvot »

rsync wrote: post #140
tguvot wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in reality it's hard (and probably expensive) to proactively cool house with AC during summer at hot/sunny regions. I live in a house with rather good insulation (the one mandated by code) in south bay, yet all the walls getting rather warm and even if you try to precool air with AC walls with bring temperature back quickly My solution was to install whole house fan which runs through the night when temperature drops…

Whole house fans are really great. It’s cheating, a bit, to live in a place that drops 20-40 F at night … but even if we didn’t, the ability to turn every open window into an air conditioner is a great trick.

Yes. It's really amazing. First thing that I did after bought house last summer was to install whole house fan. Due to it we used hvac to cool house for less than 36 hours in July-October timeframe (only at days when temperatures were above 40 for few days in a row or when night temperatures didn't went down below 20)

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#148

Post by praptak »

Inadvertent mass synchronization is a known pattern and it has a solution: jitter everything, even things triggered by events which you don't think about as synchronized.

Your widget needs to fetch data periodically and the network connectivity died. You'd be tempted to start fetching data right away after it goes back, right? Okay, but if a huge network provider gets back from an outage, you will have a problem - all widgets in that region will start fetching data at the same moment.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#149

Post by hyperpape »

yencabulator wrote: post #135
hyperpape wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> adding jitter to the startup times would solve the pickup problem There's minimal jitter in people's behavior when they are explicitly synchronized by a television broadcast, and none can be added within the constraints of broadcast television.

Of course. I was referring to adding jitter to people's thermostats, which is not a bad idea, but would not solve the entire problem here.

Re: Smart thermostats inadvertently strain electric power grids

#150

Post by pdonis »

naasking wrote: post #134
pdonis wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be a smaller usage at 6:30 Why? Won't all the heaters that turned on from 5:30 through 6:30 be on?

Even if they're all on by 6:30, that gives the power plant time to ramp up production to meet demand from 5:30-6:30. If everything is synchronized and everyone in a region starts drawing lots of power at the exact same time, the line voltage on the grid will suddenly drop below safety thresholds and could trigger a brownout for that whole region. The point being, randomizing power draw over a period of time allows th…

> that gives the power plant time to ramp up production to meet demand

But the capacity isn't there, at least not if the article's primary claim is correct:

"the peak demands are concentrated primarily when renewable energy is unavailable"

It doesn't seem like the availability of renewable energy will be much better at 6:30 vs. 5:30 or 6:00. So once all the demand is ramped up, there would still be a capacity shortfall.

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