Big Brother is controlling your thermostat

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https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/contact-denver7/thousands-of-xcel-customers-locked-out-of-thermostats-during-energy-emergency

Thousands of Xcel customers locked out of thermostats during ‘energy emergency’
22,000 people lost control of temperatures in their homes for hours Tuesday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2rnvxmayt8

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They should have read the end user license agreements when they signed up for these free/cheaper thermostats.  What do we harp on over and over?  If it’s too good to be true… read the fine print.

My local electrical company had a similar plan.  You get a cheap or free thermostat, a rebate and then YOU AGREE that they can adjust the temp should they need to protect the grid.  This should be a rant that we don’t read those agreements, not a rant against the energy company.

They agreed to it. They didn’t read what they agreed to.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Alex5723

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How long were the Terms and Conditions of the agreement? Did you need to be a lawyer to understand them? Were they marketed in font 72 and the T&Cs were in font 8 which an elderly person couldn’t read?

Windows 10 Home 22H2, Acer Aspire TC-1660 desktop + LibreOffice, non-techie

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No, it was very obvious.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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California Wants Residents to Limit EV Charging Over Labor Day Weekend

Record high temperatures are expected to put additional strain on the state’s power grid.

Greetings from California, where it’s currently hot as hell. So hot, in fact, that the state issued a Flex Alert on Wednesday asking residents to conserve energy when possible to avoid putting extra pressure on California’s already strained power grid. That means limiting the use of air conditioning and not running major appliances during peak hours. But the state is also requesting cooperation with another ask: Don’t charge your electric vehicle.

In its bulletin, the California Independent System Operator specifically asks residents to “avoid charging electric vehicles while the Flex Alert is in effect.” The ISO says drivers should charge their cars before 4 p.m., at which point “conservation begins to become most critical.”..

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They also recommend not to run washers/dryers during the peak time.  That’s normal during a heat wave.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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When someone asked me, early this century, if I though that global warming was happening, I said: in five years I’ll know how to answer you.

Well, by 2008 or so I could see the still subtle but consistent scientific evidence that the likely answer was “Yes”, and now fourteen years later I have very little doubt left about this. Because all I have to do to see that it is happening is to read the news and also look outside.

So here is the thing: the way this works and regardless of what we do: whether we go all wind, solar and electric, or whatever, in the coming years and decades it is almost certain that it’s going to continue getting hotter and also drier here and more rainy there, with more big fires, floods, long droughts and probably more hurricanes and bigger storm surges in coastal areas.
We can try to slow things down, make them less severe, but cannot stop this in a hurry.

So what are we going to do about it?

Are we going, among many other now almost unthinkable things, to have the power company adjusting our thermostats when there is a heat wave? And if so, are we going to see this as a serious overreach, as would be the case now, or as another unpalatable, but necessary thing that needs to be done?

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OscarCP wrote:

Well, by 2008 or so I could see the still subtle but consistent scientific evidence that the likely answer was “Yes”

I think I could say that 2005 and hurricane Katrina was one of the first major wake up calls for me.  It has gotten steadily much worse since.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Charlie: “I think I could say that 2005 and hurricane Katrina was one of the first major wake up calls for me”

You may be right, Charlie, about this. But the Katrina event, when a hurricane, category 1 at the time, went over New Orleans, was much worse than what could have been if the river levies and flood walls had been properly maintained and upgraded along with a number of other preparatory failures that lead to the major inundation and the subsequent human tragedy.

Not to mention the incompetent local government’s handling of the situation (remember all those school buses half-under water in their depo?)  As well as the useless top management of FEMA at the time, and its inevitable failure to provide proper assistance to the victims.

So it was hard for me to see a connection between all that and global warming, because it is not beyond belief that a cat. 1 hurricane could hit, occasionally, a major coastal city even without global warming. Also the scientists responsible for the research into the possible effects of global warming due to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were not saying, until a couple of years ago, that global warming was behind some major hurricanes (such as, perhaps, the current West Pacific hyper-typhoon now moving towards Korea and expected to cause major floods in Japan), or the endless major draughts in several parts of the world, etc. Before that, they kept repeating that some weather-related bad things that happened were possibly due to global warming, but it was “too soon to tell.”

So what has all this to do with “Big Brother is controlling your thermostat”?

Simply this: that some of those who object to this (which, depending on how it has been done, could be a legitimate reason for outrage — I don’t know, because I don’t live in California), may one day, some years from now, bump very hard against the reality of global warming and the inescapable fact that something like this will have to be mandatory, if we want to have our residences air-conditioned at all, whether we like it or not. And not just in California.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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Oscar, although Katrina had cat1 winds in NOLA it was a 5 that weakened to a 3 when it made landfall. Much different than a storm gaining strength at landfall. That pushed much more water than a cat 1 would do. I won’t dispute the fact that local officials were caught off-guard and ill-prepared. I lived through it. I saw the damage many miles inland from the coast. It is the only storm I have ever evacuated for and that was due to getting my 3 new grandbabys out of harm’s way because I was fortunate and listened to very good meteorologists (and metorologist students) that sounded the alarm much sooner than the NHC.

Global warming – Global cooling???? IDK I’m not a very smart person but I think the world shifts and goes through cycles.

As to the T-stats. I’ve warned against them for years. BUT – Now in our area electric and gas meters are digital so they’ll just start shutting you down completely, as they already do in some instances.

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cybeSAR: “although Katrina had cat1 winds in NOLA it was a 5 that weakened to a 3 when it made landfall. Much different than a storm gaining strength at landfall. That pushed much more water than a cat 1 would do.”

Quite so: thanks for clarifying this. You are right, the problem was caused by the big storm surge propelled ahead of itself up river and along canals by the still cat. 3 hurricane when making land some considerable distance away from the city, even if it had decayed to cat. 1 when actually reaching it. And my belated sympathy for all that you and your family had to live through in those awful days. And their later sequels, such as mould inside house walls.

As to the world going through cycles, that is so indeed. But if that is the case here, then we are in a cycle longer than 125,000 years, because there is compelling evidence that world-averaged summer and annual temperatures are now higher than at any time in such a long time, and also because they keep on getting hotter year after year, with every summer as hot or hotter than the previous one and often beating, more locally e.g. at the national level, the previous (and quite recent) all-time record since reliable regular temperature logs started to be kept:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-is-warmer-than-its-been-in-125-000-years/

Before scientists started paying attention to the possible green-house effect of CO2 and methane building up in the atmosphere (Arrhenius, the Nobel Price in chemistry that first wrote on this effect did not think it was going to be a big deal), the known situation was such that, absent any unknown countervailing factors,  the world was likely to start going into a new Ice Age.

This has been used often as a justification of the argument that scientists do not know what they are talking about, when it comes to global warming. Because it assumes that scientists are people that — same as certain politicians and other citizens — have to be set on a particular point of view that is the right one, when in fact they are always challenging each others’ points of view if new evidence shows up to support such challenges. That, in a nutshell, is the scientific method at work.

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cyberSAR

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Weather is crazy. Location, location, location. I’m roughly 100mi north of the coast. For Katrina which was “supposedly” a cat 3 (I think they underrated her) with cat1 winds in NOLA (about 40 mi south of me) I lost parts of my roof but didn’t have all that much water. My brother about 20 mi south of me had water but no wind damage.

For Ida last year, a cat 4, I had no wind damage (even with just a tarp on my roof due to repairs) other than trees, but water was about 2″ from coming into my office. My Lil’ brother lost his roof.

I remember Betsy and Camille as a youngster. Nothing else really sticks out. So are they getting more common? Yes, probably but I think development has a lot to do with the damages.

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OscarCP

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CyberSAR: “Weather is crazy. Location, location, location.”

Yes, and where is the development situated can be also a real problem, for example for people who own beach houses, of which there are many along the Atlantic coast, such as here, in Maryland, because of more storms and storm surges. Also people are having problems, for example with getting enough insurance, who have houses in river flood plains where river floodings used to be more rare when they were built. And also being afflicted are people who settled in nice hilly places surrounded by pine forests, to be closer to nature. And so on and forth.

Again on location, location: One reason the tele-control of thermostats might be a particularly sensitive issue in California now, is that the kind of summer weather now more common there is hotter than what houses originally needed air conditioning for when the “Sunny California” temperate coastal weather was the envy of the nation, so it is relatively rare to have it at home or, if already installed in it, to use it that often as now, which piles up on other growing uses of electricity that, together, could overload the power grid, leading to brownouts and power cuts.

Perhaps the electricity company’s attempt at controlling people’s thermostats has been a ham-fisted (or sneaky?) attempt to prevent such serious consequences from coming about too often?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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IDK But I can say prior to K hitting we had an older home with no insulation in walls or ceiling. Had a whole-house fan in hallway ceiling. It really wasn’t all that bad with windows open even with the humidity (yes, I was younger then). We didn’t have a genset capable of running central A/C.  A single 5K BTU window unit sufficed at night in the bedrooms. After insulating, that same window unit doesn’t cut it if central is off or turned up high. We used to build based on the environment. Now we build for creature comforts. I crawled through attics for more years than I care to think about when I was younger doing HVAC. In my opinion it is no hotter now than it was 45 years ago. Yes, variations from year to year, but nothing much different.

Heck I remember as a kid we didn’t even have A/C. Remember napping on the floor next to a big box fan. We didn’t have A/C in my grammar school until I hit 4th grade I think it was, and that school was not really built without A/C in mind… they just didn’t get it done soon enough. So, we lived with it.

More than anything, I think it’s what you grow accustomed to.

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CyberSAR: It looks like you and I have had similar experiences with summer heat when young.

I grew up in South America, where, at the time, air conditioning in houses was unknown, as it was here in the USA too. It was something that only big stores in big cities had installed and running and people went in there often just to cool off and admire this latest scientific marvel. There were heat waves where the daily maximum temperature was above 100 degrees for more than a day in a row and the humidity near 70% or 80%. But neither the young nor the old died of it, that I ever heard of. We slowed down, kept off the sun, took frequent cold showers, drank plenty of cold lemonade and such like. We survived just fine. And in the evenings slept with no cover sheets and windows open, bug screen on, while keeping a mosquito repellent coil burning slowly on the floor.

Then I went to live in Sydney, Australia. On the shore-side Eastern Suburbs. There, while usually cooler than a few miles inland,  temperatures often topped 90 degrees, few houses had air conditioning — certainly none I lived in. But humidity was mostly low and as a result it was not that bad.

Now things have got remarkably hotter there in summer and people are having a situation similar as the one in California because of that.

The way we live now, having air conditioning is not something that can be ignored by most people in summer anymore. Slowing down and talking several showers a day are no very likely options for most of us now days.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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cyberSAR

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IDK Oscar, Could be the poles are shifting. Believe it or not, I still leave my doors open with the A/C set at 78 while I’m working even when it’s 95-100. Just enough A/C to keep the humidity down a bit. Humidity down here is always high. If it drops below 85% it must be winter 🙂 I like the fresh air! Guess as I aged I don’t feel the heat as much??? BUT at night I keep it 65-70 – any higher and I can’t take it! Must be those danged Giza sheets! 🙂

That’s not to say I could withstand hours in an attic without often breaks as I used to. And it doesn’t mean I write off global warming. Other than the storms, the temps here aren’t any worse than what I remember throughout my life.

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OscarCP

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CyberSAR: “Guess as I aged I don’t feel the heat as much???”

I also notice the heat less than when I was younger. But feel the cold more than then. Perhaps because I am thinner now than I was then?
Not feeling as much the heat can be a problem, because one may be at risk of overheating and not realize it.

Also how hot one feels does depend so much on the humidity (the “thermal sensation”). Case in point: I went for a long walk in mid-town Madrid, Spain, on a nice summer afternoon, back in the early 2000s.

I walked quite vigorously and covered quite a distance over maybe two hours while feeling pleasantly, even invigoratingly warm. Then I got close to a sign that, in digital numbers, showed the local time of day and the temperature. It was around 3:00 PM there. The temperature was 42 Celsius, or almost 108 F.

So I said to myself: “Is it the low humidity? Whatever it is, I better get inside some nice bar right away and drink a cool beer while out of the sun, than die of heat stroke, even if it does not feel like one is coming.”

And so I did, and so I am still here, telling you this story.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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Like many others, I bought and DYI installed a wifi-connected smart thermostat about 5 years ago and got a nice rebate from the state for it.  Perfect.  But after reading this, I’m glad I kept my old ‘dumb’ thermostat.  If ‘they’ take it over, all I have to do is find where I squirreled it away for safekeeping…

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Business and government waste many times more than residential.  Sticking it to customers is just a way of controlling those who have the least power to push back.

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