Posted on 09/22/2022 6:47:45 AM PDT by rktman
A new study reveals that those "smart" thermostats installed, often at great expense, in homes actually cause the energy consumption to rise, not fall.
"Engineering estimates from the California Technical Forum …. predict that smart thermostats will produce substantial reductions in energy consumption," the report, called "The Human Perils of Scaling Smart Technologies: Evidence from Field Experiments," said.
It was released by authors from Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, University of Southern California and University of Alabama.
They studied the smart thermostat impact on energy consumption using data over an 18-month period including more than 16 million hourly electricity use records and almost 700,000 daily observations of natural gas consumption.
"The most relevant estimates to our experimental sample come from Department of Energy Technical Reference Manuals, which are annual reports produced by energy providers and regulators. These reports primarily rely on engineering simulations and survey data to predict the effects of energy efficiency programs at scale.
"These predictions are then used by energy providers to justify expenditures on energy efficiency programs. Mapping these predictions for Californians, which vary by climate zone and the size of a home, to our experimental samples we find that savings of 1.3% and 4.0% are respectively predicted for overall electricity and natural gas consumption."
However, those thermostats were found to "fail to deliver the expected energy savings."
The researchers said, in their nearly 100-page report, those thermostats "actually increase electricity and gas consumption by 2.3% and 4.2%, respectively," the report found.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Hellooooo. They are importanter people like grabem nuisance in Cali. THEY need to be pampered in order to deliver superior service to us peons.
I have not read them, but I have heard there are research articles that demonstrate that it costs just as much (if not more) to warm a cold home (in heating season) than it does to just maintain a temperature. You’re not just warming the air, but you also have to spend time warming up the structure and it’s contents, and that can take a lot of time/energy. So if you’re going on vacation, sure, drop the thermostat, but if you are lowering the temperature during the work/school day and/or doing it at night, you are paying for it during your warm up periods. The same is true but in reverse for cooling.
Once you understand this, it all makes sense.
But sure, keep on bugging your own home, letting other people control your appliances, peep into your refrigerator, run your life with a "smart wall". It's "convenient".
Glad they are working for you.
There’s too many factors. I have one and it makes a huge difference.... We have it set to conserve when we’re not home and to set at a comfortable temperature when we are. I don’t use a Nest or anything like that. It’s simply a WiFi enable thermostat that I con control remotely.
there will be “savings” when the state controls your thermostat
and there goes the dining room furniture
It’s the users who override the default, energy saving settings who cause the problem. Clearly, the only solution is to remove individual control.
I don’t know about everyone else, but the most energy efficient seems to be heat-off-cool to me, if there was two improvements to make would be a freeze prevention override and a duration timer to reset it to zero.
People keep their air conditioners way too low. I am in Central Florida and I keep mine at 80 all summer long. I walk into some my friends houses and it is a freezer. That cannot be good for your health. 80° is the perfect temperature for any house in any state. My neighbors all cry “oh my electric bill so high” while I brag and tell them mine is so low. They are shocked when I tell them my electric bill. I also don’t have to use the budget plan where the electric bill stays the same 12 months of the year. I just pay whatever it is every month.
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Only Americans are still dumb enough to fall for the pretext of putting "Smart" in front of a noun and think it's true.
Exactly, what are the factory settings? There is no universal house in a standard climate area. So user will need to reset but keeping the new settings in a general range for their area should be effective. I normally adjust my non AI thermostats when leaving the house. This saves energy. It is the large temperature changes which use energy, set too low and the heat needs to run too long and the same for cooling. So the users of Nest should be able to come up with a responsible temperature range which saves them energy.
Oh, wait, what I meant was......
My home 22yrs ago came with 4 Programable Thermostats and 4-Zones. Okay, they simply ran on a time clock, but they worked. System was clunky, noisy, inefficient but better than one thermostat like most homes in neighborhood.
When I went to a new furnace in 2020 I put in 4 Semi-Intelligent Thermostats, with Wifi and new Zone Control Panel. Wifi ONLY to to allow me to adjust and track data from phone or computer. NO ACCESS TO OUTSIDE WORLD. Hackers, maybe, but NO Utilities.
Biggest savings came from Multi-zone control system and Furnace with Constant Torque Motor and 2-stage flame. Still not a fan of heat pumps in northern tiers, but that’s just personal preference.
I set my AC at 73 and feel good.
Heat at 70 in the winter.
You vill be hot/cold and like it!
You can still buy “dumb” setback thermostats for $25 or so. They are just a timer that automates the process of turning down the heat when you’re sleeping or vice versa for a/c. Proven energy savings and no snooping.
Eat ze buuugs!
100%.
The last systems we had installed (upstairs unit and downstairs unit), they wavered us to use stone sort of smart thermostat. Not a Wi-Fi system, but something else. I said no...use the previous systems thermostats. They’re simple and programmable.
Neighbors across the street went with a “smart”, Wi-Fi system. Been nothing but trouble for them.
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