Colorado Utility Took Control Of Thousands Of People’s Home Thermostats

GD I am sure you are familiar with this. Power companies have done this for years if you are on certain energy saving programs. Technology allows control through smart thermostats now. Back in the day they put a radio controlled (sometimes LAN line controlled) relay directly on the condensing unit. With a signal the contactor would kill power to the condensing unit to reduce over all demand. I don't remember if the relay killed the fan and or just the compressor. I always thought it was a bad concept to interrupt power regardless of what stage the unit was in. I have seen the life of the compressors shortened by this device. Kind of big brotherish but people signed up for it to get rebates or discounts.
 
Stonewall said:
GD I am sure you are familiar with this. Power companies have done this for years if you are on certain energy saving programs. Technology allows control through smart thermostats now. Back in the day they put a radio controlled (sometimes LAN line controlled) relay directly on the condensing unit. With a signal the contactor would kill power to the condensing unit to reduce over all demand. I don't remember if the relay killed the fan and or just the compressor. I always thought it was a bad concept to interrupt power regardless of what stage the unit was in. I have seen the life of the compressors shortened by this device. Kind of big brotherish but people signed up for it to get rebates or discounts.
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Yes, but they could only cut your unit off for a few minutes at a time via the weird box they installed on it.

With the special smart thermostats, they can change your programming any way they want.

Note: they can only do this with the smart thermostats provided by them.
 
Henry Kissinger is quoted as saying, “If you control the food, you control a nation. If you control the energy, you control a region. If you control the money, you control the world.” History tells us this is true.

40 minutes, but very interesting.




 
Stonewall said:
Kind of big brotherish but people signed up for it to get rebates or discounts.
Click to expand...

I didn't read the article or notice this until now (I was wondering how they would have access to do this). I'm sure when people signed up for this, there was fine print that said this might happen. Sucks to be them, but they agreed to let it happen and got incentives as well.
 
When it was first proposed, there were many who said no way in hell I want big brother to control my energy use.

For the cost of a thermostat, $100, and basically $2.00 a month people were stupid enough to sign up for this.
 
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