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NEAR BOCA RATON, Fla. – A Florida woman has been arrested after she allegedly attacked a woman over 65 because she messed with the thermostat in their home. According to the arrest affidavit, Palm Beach Sheriff’s deputies said they responded to a domestic violence call at a home near Boca Raton earlier this month. Deputies say a woman at the home said that she had gone to adjust the thermostat, when Breiland Springer “came up behind her and grabbed her by her face.” The victim stated that Springer, 31, “tried to rip my face off.” The deputy noted in the...

22,000 people lost control of temperatures in their homes for hours Tuesday.. DENVER — During the dog days of summer, it's important to keep your home cool. But when thousands of Xcel customers in Colorado tried adjusting their thermostats Tuesday, they learned they had no control over the temperatures in their own homes. ... Xcel confirmed to Contact Denver7 that 22,000 customers who had signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their smart thermostats for hours on Tuesday. "It's a voluntary program. Let's remember that this is something that customers choose to be a part...

Power companies in Texas are remotely raising temperatures inside of some customers’ homes amid the state’s ongoing energy shortage.Houston resident Brandon English, whose home has an internet-connected smart thermostat installed, was shocked to learn of the practice after his wife and infant daughter “woke up sweating.”Speaking with KHOU 11, English stated that despite his wife turning down the temperature before taking a nap with their 3-year-old child, the temperature in their home rose significantly.“They’d been asleep long enough that the house had already gotten to 78 degrees,” English said. “So they woke up sweating.”English, who expressed concerns over the potential...

A smart thermostat quickly learns to optimize building microclimates for both energy consumption and user preference. Buildings account for about 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption, and are responsible for one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions. Making buildings more energy-efficient is not only a cost-saving measure, but a crucial climate change mitigation strategy. Hence the rise of “smart” buildings, which are increasingly becoming the norm around the world. Smart buildings automate systems like heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC); lighting; electricity; and security. Automation requires sensory data, such as indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, and occupancy...

Full Title: Set Your Air Conditioning to 78 Degrees During the Day, 82 Degrees at Night, Federal Agencies Recommend Looking to beat the heat without breaking the bank? Energy Star, the federal program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy, has some tips — but you might not like them.Energy Star recommends that, in order to reduce costs and energy usage, you should set your thermostat as high as comfortably possible through the summer.Specifically, they say you should set your thermostat to 78 degrees while you’re home.Spending the day out? Turn that thermostat up 7 degrees to 85.Then,...

I come from a long line of farmers and timber people, folks who made their living from what grew out of the ground, men who had a great and abiding respect for the soil and water – who harvested the timber with an eye on selective cutting, for leaving seed trees to replenish the woodlands, for never leaving the dead trimmings next to a standing tree to keep the bugs who attack dead wood from going into a live tree and killing it. They would let fields lie fallow every so often to give the soil a rest and let...

Honeywell has announced a new Wi-Fi-controlled thermostat that is intended to be distributed by municipalities instead of purchased at retail by consumers in order to better manage energy consumption across a town or city. South Sioux City, Neb., will be the first community to deploy the new thermostat to help its 13,000 residents manage electricity costs, which are said to have risen steadily there in the past three years. In the future, other municipalities will recruit residents to reduce energy consumption when demand spikes, a strategy known as automated demand response, or ADR. As part of this, the residents would...

Upstart smart thermostat maker Nest has received almost-universally glowing praise for its Learning Thermostat since it launched last year — and it also received a major patent complaint from Honeywell, which claims Nest is walking all over its intellectual property. Not so, says Nest: the company just filed its official answer to Honeywell's complaint today, and in addition to arguing that it isn't infringing Honeywell's patents, it also stridently argues that most of those patents are "hopelessly invalid." What's more, Nest also claims that Honeywell is misusing its patents to stifle innovation — a strategy Nest claims Honeywell has used...

(Source: York Daily Record) By Teresa Ann Boeckel, York Daily Record, Pa. March 25--YORK, Pa -- Dwight Rhine recently spotted additions to the utility poles in his Manchester Township neighborhood and wondered what was up. A metal arm sticks out from the pole, and the object attached to it is partially blue. It turns out that they are controllers for Met-Ed's energy saving program.

President Barack Obama has brought a more relaxed style to the White House, according to Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times, among other things going suit coat-less in the Oval Office and allowing others to do the same. Obama critics will probably hold this against him and mark him down as disrespecting the presidency. But the Oval Office is an office after all, even if it is the world's most famous one. At bottom, it is a work space albeit it holds an almost sacred place in the hearts of many Americans. Most Americans probably won't begrudge Obama...

Did anybody else notice that the phrase “global warming” has largely disappeared from public discourse? All but the slowest enviromentalists have dropped that phrase because for the last three years the globe as been cooling off. So, the new phrase is “climate change.” As a public service, I’d like to explain this phrase by reference to a pair of coal-fired furnaces, one in Birmingham, Alabama, the other one in Baltimore, Maryland. My mother grew up in Birmingham almost a century ago, in a rambling, wood-framed house on Warsaw Street. It had sleeping porches for summer heat, and a coal furnace...

The Associated Press reports that President Barack Obama is following in the footprints of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush when it comes to making the White House more eco-friendly ... AP cites a recent TV interview in which Obama said “he's one of those people who tiptoes around and turns off lights at night” and that he wants to “show the American people that it's not that hard" to conserve energy. Here’s something else Obama could do: Use his power ring to freeze the thermostat in the Oval Office at no higher than 68o in the winter and no...

President Obama has asked the U.S. Department of Energy to tighten up regulations aimed at discouraging wasteful use of energy. Measures under consideration include remote thermostat monitoring, higher taxes on fuel, and an “energy-saver-of-the-month” lottery. “Too many people are frivolously consuming an excessive quantity of this precious resource,” Obama lamented. “We need better incentives to deter unnecessary use. The certain knowledge that the government will be checking on your electricity bill, a higher price at the gas pump, or the chance to have your name drawn for a large cash prize could modify behavior in the right direction.” “It’s not...

The Devireg 550 thermostat has a circular dial with a 24 marks, corresponding to 24 hours. Below it is a small button that can be pushed in, but also dialed. Yes, I have tried googling the owner's manual and googling for other help, but for some reason my ISP doesn't load the pages that I click on after google returns links (we're in China). Any help on how to operate this thing, particularly how to get it to turn on the heat, would be appreciated. Thanks.

Considering that the state already legislates what people think (hate crimes), regulates what students eat (no trans fats), restricts where motorists drive (car-pool lanes), forces many people to pay for what they don't want (public schools) and restricts where anyone may inhale cigarette smoke (not in restaurants), it's probably no surprise that Sacramento bureaucrats' next scheme was to remotely control thermostats inside Californians' homes. Apparently, Sacramento finally went too far. As the Los Angeles Daily News reported: "Amid widespread criticism and fear of increasing control over Californians' lives by 'Big Brother,' a state panel has dropped a plan that would...

California Proposes Taking Control of Thermostats By Monisha Bansal CNSNews.com Staff Writer January 11, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - The California Energy Commission has proposed requiring thermostats that allow the government to control the temperature of homes and businesses in case of high energy prices or shortages, a measure that some critics are calling "draconian." The proposed regulations would require all residential and non-residential buildings to have a Programmable Communicating Thermostat (PCT). The regulations state that "all PCTs shall be distributed with a non-removable Radio Data System (RDS) communications device ... which can be used by utilities to send price and emergency...

ATLANTA - Former President Jimmy Carter on Tuesday called for the United States to shut down its Guantanamo Bay prison to demonstrate the country's commitment to protecting human rights. "Despite President George W. Bush's bold reminder that America is determined to promote freedom and democracy around the world, the U.S. continues to suffer terrible embarrassment and a blow to our reputation as a champion of human rights because of reports concerning abuses of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo," Carter said in a news conference following the close of a two-day human rights conference at his Atlanta center. In addition...