This one kind of makes sense at least. Ideally the power company should have planned ahead, of course. But allowing their thermostats to get to 88 - hot but still manageable - averted the far worse option of rolling blackouts.
Yeah, in this particular situation, this might be the lesser of two evils. But, the true solution would have been them actually knowing what they’re doing and having sufficient reserve capacity, like a utility is supposed to have for this exact reason.
exactly, they spent time and money doing this instead of investing in infrastructure 🤦♂️
It sounds like this is fairly cheap to implement. I imagine the utility just pays for software from a vendor that integrates in with the consumers’ existing smart thermostats. From there, it’s just the cost of the incentive payments.
But then the CEO’s kid might need to drive an X3 like some kind of hobo instead of an X5.
@AgreeableLandscape Sounds like it worked exactly how it is supposed to. Customers that complained on the internet wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do so if they were a black out due to overloading the grid.
Considering how trivial they are to bypass, I don’t see how any customer would be complaining. It’s literally 5 labelled wires and it’s low voltage. And technically if you want just AC it’s only 2 wires.
Even easier solution is to not get a smart thermostat lol. I’ve always thought those things are stupid. Hundreds of dollars per unit just for adjusting the temperature, with a life cycle at the mercy of the company running the cloud it needs to use. Meanwhile you can get a device that does the same thing for five dollars that could well last you till your house falls down?
Honestly, it’s trivial to build and program your own. It’s a simple low voltage switch controlled by temperature. Any raspberry Pi or Arduino could do that.
My thoughts exactly. Rip it off the wall and start touching wires together, or better yet replace it with one that isn’t going to lock you out.
Don’t even have to. If you complete the circuit farther down the line, it will work the same.
