On Jan 4, 11:24*pm, "Pete C." wrote:
DerbyDad03 wrote:

On Jan 4, 6:42 pm, "Pete C." wrote:
DerbyDad03 wrote:

On Jan 4, 2:30 pm, "Pete C." wrote:
DerbyDad03 wrote:

On Jan 4, 12:07 pm, "HeyBub" wrote:
California to require programmable communicating thermostats. It's a
thermostat with a built-in FM receiver so the state can set the temperature
of your HVAC system to whatever they think is appropriate.

"In other words, the temperature of your home will no longer be yours to
control. *Your desires and needs can and will be overridden by the state of
California through its public and private utility organizations. *All this
is for the common good, of course."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/..._your_thermost...

If you're going to read the americanthinker side of the story, you
should also read this site:

http://topics.energycentral.com/cent.../detail.cfm?ai...

Aside from the fact that it appears to be a fairly friendly discussion
related to the pros and cons of PCT's by every day people, there seems
to be some discrepencies between the main article at that site and the
one at americanthinker. Well, maybe they are not 'discrepencies' in
the literal sense, but the way each site explains the process
certainly differs.

Specifically, americanthinker implies that the "state" will control
your PCT during price events with manual overide by the homeowner
possible, while the energycentral site seems to imply that the
consumer can "opt-in" for these controls if desired. Yes, in both
cases the utility will take control of your PCT, but the way it is
worded at energycentral doesn't make it sound as big-brother-esque as
americanthinker. If the homeowner gives the utility permission to
control the PCT during price events, then no one has lost any
freedoms.

As far the emergency conditions go, call me a wimp if you want, but if
the utility decides to increase the set points of all the PCT's in my
neighborhood so our AC only keeps our houses at 80, but our fridges,
freezers, computers, TVs and phones keep working, let 'em! * Given the
choice of what devices to keep running in order to *avoid a blackout,
I'd choose to live without my AC over the others. *Look at it this way
- the utilities already have the abilty to take areas off the grid if
they feel it is in the best interest of the "whole" - i.e. rolling
blackouts. Which would you prefer: A few hours at 80 degrees or a few
hours with no power at all? *I'll opt for the former.

I've not read the articles in question and (fortunately) do not live in
the land of fruits, nuts and flakes.

My thought on the general subject is that without requiring any sort of
direct state or even utility control, it would be possible to
significantly reduce the peak utility loads and therefore the size and
number of generating plants required by implementing a simple form of
load management.

Big commercial buildings have done load management for many years, using
simple controls to insure that large loads like heating and cooling that
serve different parts of the building are not active at the same time.
With the ease of receiving accurate time signals from the WWVB
transmitters or from GPS, just creating thermostats that only operate
the attached electrically powered heating or cooling equipment in a
given half of the hour could substantially reduce peak loads with little
to no impact on comfort. If your 5kW A/C unit and you neighbors 5kW A/C
unit never operate at the same time, you give a more constant 5kW load
to the utility instead of 0kW/5kW/10kW variability.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Who decides who gets which half hour?

Big commercial buildings that do load management typically have a
single owner/contractor responsible for the power management. A
neighborhood full of individual houses does not. Even if they
implemented something as simple as odd house numbers get the top half
of the hour and even numbers get the bottom, someone in "authority"
has to make that decision and processes need to be put into place to
make it happen. That implies some type of "direct state or even
utility control". You certainly can't expect mere citizens to get
together and agree on a schedule. So whether it's remote controlled
thermostats or a "half hour on, half hour off" duty cycle, there would
need to be some body of authority in charge.

By serial number of the thermostat, i.e. odd sn runs in the first half
of the hour, even in the second half. If every single thermostat off the
production line is alternating and all the shipments have this same
alternation then while the distribution might not be perfect at the
street level, as a whole it would work.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Who is going to tell (force?) all the various manufacturers of
thermostats how to number and ship their product?

At my company, T-Stats by DerbyDad, we chose to number our products
with the first 4 digits being the model number, the next 8 being the
serial number, and the last 6 being the date code. *My competitor,
Feng Shui TempControl (a Japanese company) chooses to end all of their
serial numbers with a 4 digit plant code based on where the devices
were assembled.

Who is going to make us change the way we chose to run our private
enterprises?

Now you're just being silly. The point is to have alternating settings
in the production stream. If every case of t-stats you ship is half and
half the overall distribution will be just fine.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

*I'm* being silly? Do you really think your suggestion is viable?

How many thermostat manufacturers are there - worldwide? How are you
going to get them to go along with your suggestion? What's in it for
them to put in place the processes required to have thermostats with 2
different settings produced and packed half and half? If they won't
do it voluntarily (and I doubt they will) then some authoritative body
would have to make them "want" to do it - perhaps with incentives and
all the grabage that goes along with that sort of program. Lucky for
you, no such worldwide body exists, because that would put us right
back where we started with the "direct state or even utility control"
that you are trying to avoid.

Oh, by the way, please don't suggest that not every manufaturer has to
play along for your suggestion to make a difference. If consumers
have a choice between a thermostat that only works on a 50% duty cycle
sitting on the shelf next to ones that work whenever the consumer
wants it to, which one do you think they are going to buy? Which of
course means that as soon as the full-time T-stats start outselling
the 50% models, no one will make 50% models anymore.

Granted, on paper your suggestion makes sense, but it is simply not
practical. Sorry.