10 ms·

Shocked to find smart thermostats raised remotely by “Smart Savers Texas” progrm

80 points by lando2319 5y ago

justahuman74 5y ago
"Smart" has come to mean something sinister
- zwkrt 5y ago
  “ Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
- derefr 5y ago
  It's interesting; AFAICT "smart" in relation to consumer electronics has seemingly never been used for any other meaning than "is connected to the Internet, enabling some cloud service to manage it, and for you to interact with it through that cloud service." Meanwhile, if you want to express the idea "a device that uses local sensors + local processing to attempt to optimize for property a human configured it to optimize for", you don't call the device smart — you call it intelligent.
  - mkl 5y ago
    Sure it has. Here's one brand that's used "smart" for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_%26_Paykel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_%26_Paykel
    - derefr 5y ago
      That brand is seemingly trying to use "Smart[X]" or "[X]Smart" as trademarked jargon terms referring to specific features its products have. This is different in kind from generic common-language use of the word "smart" by consumers as an adjective attached to product categories ("smart fridge", "smart home", etc.), which is what I was referring to. Even in the 80s, the X10 "smart home" automation technology was all about networking the devices in your home together to put them under control of a central hub; not about any active "intelligence" per se. A thermostat has always been an example of "device intelligence", but has never been called "smart" technology... until recently, as there are now "smart" thermostats (like Nest.) But these are another Internet-of-Shit product, and that — not any clever behavior — is what makes it a "smart" device.
- EADGBE 5y ago
  Yup - as soon as a third party realized they could start making money off of it.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    Now that is Smart!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mitchdoogle 5y ago
  All these companies figured out that idiots will pay a subscription fee for things that they used to pay for just once
- Traster 5y ago
  Reminds me of "Smart" motorways in the UK - they're "Smart" in that you can drive on the hard shoulder when there are no accidents. When there are accidents, the hard shoulder is meant to close and the motorway returns to normal operation with a hard shoulder. What actually happens is you break down, there's no hard shoulder and a lorry slams into the back of you killing your entire family. The Highways agency has been referred to the crown prosecution service to consider charges of corporate manslaughter.
mardifoufs 5y ago
Wasn't that the point of those thermostats in the first place? To help utilities manage demand? I'd have thought they'd get a lot more than just "a sweepstakes entry" for installing a utility controlled theromstat though. Also, is 78°F really that hot? I live in Canada, but summers can get really hot. Yet I don't even turn on AC below 80° though maybe humidity is way higher there. Otherwise nothing seems particularly unreasonable here: a utility used a tool (designed to let it better manage peak demand) to do exactly that while only raising the temperatures pretty mildly. I wouldn't personally opt in into a remote controlled thermostat but if I willingly installed it or bought a house that already had it, I wouldn't be surprised when it does exactly what it is supposed to do
- readthenotes1 5y ago
  It is really humid in Houston so 78F without some form of cooling is pretty uncomfortable. Plus, I bet they're used to keeping it at 70...
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Humidity is definitely a huge factor. A/C acts as a dehumidifier. Another factor is the amount of IR being emitted by interior surfaces. If it's really hot outside (and the building isn't insulated to the latest top-tier building standards), the ceiling and walls can be radiating enough IR heat that a 78F air temperature feels quite uncomfortable.
    - syockit 5y ago
      I don't know much about how A/C works, whether the dehumidifier mechanism can be decoupled from the cooling mechanism. If it can't, then shouldn't the thermostat be coupled to a hygrostat so that that A/C runs when it is humid enough despite being cool in terms of temperature? On the other hand, today I learned that there's something called heat index and humidex.
      - pdonis 5y ago
throwkeep 5y ago
> “They’d been asleep long enough that the house had already gotten to 78 degrees,” English said. “So they woke up sweating.” This is silly. 78 degrees is not that bad and it’s literally what the Department of Energy recommends setting your thermostat to in the summer.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  To be fair the humidity in Houston is often above 80 percent even at night. 78 and 80% humidity would cause you to sweat profusely while sleeping under covers
  - motles 5y ago
    what if they used a fan and didn't sleep under the covers?
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      That could work but you’d probably feel too cold, haha. The eco solution would be to get a whole house dehumidifier and a ceiling fan. But for those who already have central air that seems superfluous
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        Does an air conditioner use that much more power than a dehumidifier?
        unishark 5y ago
        I think they're actually similar technologies and wattages. So really I think people are comparing using a room unit (being a dehumidifier) versus a central AC systems cooling the entire house.
        robjan 5y ago
        They can be a lot cheaper. We commonly use them in HK to stop our flats going mouldy when we are out the house and it's 35C (90-95F) at 80% humidity. It's a lot cheaper, possibly an order of magnitude, than running the air-conditioning 24/7.
endisneigh 5y ago
It’s fascinating how little innovation there’s been in cheap air conditioning. For one, modern hvac is way too lossy by design. You spend thousands a year heating up an entire zone, which generally is your whole house unless you’re lucky enough to have zoned ducts and multiple air handlers. Even then you’re wasting a lot of energy cooling and heating areas you’re not even occupying. Mini-Split are too expensive to have installed by professionals. In the situation described in the article ideally the bed could be cooled somehow. Perhaps a device the size of a five gallon bucket filled with refrigerant circulating cool air around the bed somehow? Idk Edit: What I’d love to see is a window AC (Ptac maybe) that’s very large, say half a full sheet of plywood, so 4 x 4ft that’s 2in thin. Then you could actually fit this in like a window in between the walls. If it’s silent thru the use of an inverter it would be better than both a Mini-Split and a window ac due to the fact that it’s 16sqft footprint would afford it very large fans which could move the volume of air effectively silently.
- ashleyn 5y ago
  You would probably want to think about the design of the actual house more than thinking about gains in AC efficiency. There are unconventional home designs that passively make a home tend either cool or hot using the surrounding environment. Good luck dealing with the zoning board though.
  - notimetorelax 5y ago
    They’re installing these [1] in the new buildings in Switzerland, it does keep the buildings comfortably cool. [1] https://www.jansen.com/en/plastic-solutions/products/geothermal-energy/thermal-earth-probes.html https://www.jansen.com/en/plastic-solutions/products/geother...
- danuker 5y ago
  > modern hvac is way too lossy by design I'd go further and say modern housing is unsustainable. Check out passive houses.
- aulin 5y ago
  Amazing how living in different parts of the world changes your perspective on everyday things, here (Italy) centralized AC is basically non-existent (and expensive), mini-splits are the norm but they're usually installed with a dedicated external motor for each room and very rarely with a single motor and a mini-split in each room.
del_operator 5y ago
Yikes, though this is why I appreciate my own sensor dashboard for home temp, pressure and humidity monitored by my Pi + enviro+. It’s pretty good about alerting me to temp changes. I now feel pretty sensitive to degree changes over 70, especially as relative humidity goes up over 45%. Dry air up to 74 I can handle with a decent ceiling fan. Houston at 78 would be higher on my discomfort index.
handoflixue 5y ago
His wife received an alert on her phone soon after that. The family said their thermostat had been changed remotely, raising the temperature of their home during a three-hour “energy saving event.” The family’s smart thermostat was installed a few years ago as part of a new home security package. Many smart thermostats can be enrolled in a program called "Smart Savers Texas." It's operated by a company called EnergyHub. The agreement states that in exchange for an entry into sweepstakes, electric customers allow them to control their thermostats during periods of high energy demand. --- Calling this "Shock" seems like some serious FUD. They signed up for this program, they got an alert at the time, and they were able to un-enroll after realizing the deal wasn't a good fit for them. There is absolutely nothing "sinister" about this. They literally enrolled in a program to allow exactly this behavior.
- hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
  They probably weren't aware of what they signed up for -- someone hid the details in the terms and conditions, which no one read. Because no one ever does.
  - handoflixue 5y ago
    If that was the case, it's on the article / journalist to actually uncover and present that information. Beyond that, the article says they got an alert when it happened and later decided to un-enroll from the program, so I really don't see any grounds to assume bad-faith on the part of the people running it.
  - kthejoker2 5y ago
    This isn't true, the email they send is very clear that it's a sweepstakes based on enrolling in a program to raise your temperature during high heat momemts to help your fellow Texans to avoid brownouts. In fact, the email begins by explaining how many heat deaths there are, how power outages affect vulnerable populations, and how if everyone could raise their temperatures 3 degrees during critical events we could avoid all of that. And then a clear call to action to participate.
- 5y ago
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
"Drivers shocked to find that device monitoring their driving behavior increased their premiums."
bfung 5y ago
These Demand Response programs have been around at least since 2013. I used to work for a company called Opower, since acq. by Oracle, that worked on setting these temperatures with options/configurations on the user end. OhmConnect, Tendril, Simple Energy, were/are all in this same DR space. Now granted, residential thermostats usually doesn’t have humidity detection, but any company doing DR probably has other sources of data already to figure out an optimal temp/humidity setting to drive better DR adoption. At the time, Opower had housing and demographic data to predict and calculate how long to pre-cool/heat a home. Glad Texas is catching up, but the marketing and user education part seems to be lacking. Need to change behavior & hearts and minds or this type of backfire happens. If no one participated in DR, outages and brown outs could kill more people than cause an inconvenience of being too warm.
- neon_electro 5y ago
  Why is/should participation in a demand response program be the difference between killing people and inconvenience? Wouldn't fluctuations in grid supply and demand make much more of a difference as far as there being energy for folks' survival needs? Shouldn't grids be ensuring they have sufficient supply so that no one dies? Why would we want to design a system where lack of participation in a demand response program means people could be at risk of death?
  - bagels 5y ago
    Why should we allow people to live in places they will die without air conditioning?
    - bob1029 5y ago
      Its not about dying. Its about quality of life. Most things are at this point in our civilization. What if your furnace fails and you live in Alaska? Some Houstonians would probably assume that is a death sentence. Someone in Alaska would probably be fine. Uncomfortable, yes. Dead? No. More broadly, I find it incredibly contradictory that a technology board would approve of intentionally-shitty quality of service because the engineering "is just too hard".
ganzuul 5y ago
> Access Denied > You don't have permission to access "http://www.ksdk.com/article/news/remote-thermostat-adjustment-texas-energy-shortage/285-5acf2bc5-54b7-4160-bffe-1f9a5ef4362a http://www.ksdk.com/article/news/remote-thermostat-adjustmen..." on this server.
- em-bee 5y ago
  seems inaccessible from outside the US. it's archived here: https://archive.is/5Teif https://archive.is/5Teif
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    > “Was my daughter at the point of overheating?” English said. “She’s 3 months old. They dehydrate very quickly.” Yikes! Here I was thinking about jokes regarding smart fridges... Thank you!
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
The State of Texas making you save energy. How ironic.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
TheGuyWhoCodes 5y ago
Enroll into a program to allow energy companies to modify your set temperature in exchange for a free thermostats or credits and be shocked when the energy company make good on the agreement... It's nothing new and have existed for years in Texas, this man didn't read the fine print and was just happy to get free stuff. This is called demand response programs and existed for years. It's a way to shave the peak instead of building a new power station. You usually get a notification in advance so you can opt out. This is nothing new and existed in the past in some forms. There are also programs to remote control water heaters (to turn them on at night when demand is low) by having special circuitry in the electric box. This will also be implemented more and extended as home EV charging stations pop up.

80 points by lando2319 5y ago

justahuman74 5y ago

"Smart" has come to mean something sinister

zwkrt 5y ago
“ Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
derefr 5y ago
It's interesting; AFAICT "smart" in relation to consumer electronics has seemingly never been used for any other meaning than "is connected to the Internet, enabling some cloud service to manage it, and for you to interact with it through that cloud service." Meanwhile, if you want to express the idea "a device that uses local sensors + local processing to attempt to optimize for property a human configured it to optimize for", you don't call the device smart — you call it intelligent.
- mkl 5y ago
  Sure it has. Here's one brand that's used "smart" for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_%26_Paykel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_%26_Paykel
  - derefr 5y ago
    That brand is seemingly trying to use "Smart[X]" or "[X]Smart" as trademarked jargon terms referring to specific features its products have. This is different in kind from generic common-language use of the word "smart" by consumers as an adjective attached to product categories ("smart fridge", "smart home", etc.), which is what I was referring to. Even in the 80s, the X10 "smart home" automation technology was all about networking the devices in your home together to put them under control of a central hub; not about any active "intelligence" per se. A thermostat has always been an example of "device intelligence", but has never been called "smart" technology... until recently, as there are now "smart" thermostats (like Nest.) But these are another Internet-of-Shit product, and that — not any clever behavior — is what makes it a "smart" device.
EADGBE 5y ago
Yup - as soon as a third party realized they could start making money off of it.
- edoceo 5y ago
  Now that is Smart!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mitchdoogle 5y ago
All these companies figured out that idiots will pay a subscription fee for things that they used to pay for just once
Traster 5y ago
Reminds me of "Smart" motorways in the UK - they're "Smart" in that you can drive on the hard shoulder when there are no accidents. When there are accidents, the hard shoulder is meant to close and the motorway returns to normal operation with a hard shoulder. What actually happens is you break down, there's no hard shoulder and a lorry slams into the back of you killing your entire family. The Highways agency has been referred to the crown prosecution service to consider charges of corporate manslaughter.

mardifoufs 5y ago

Wasn't that the point of those thermostats in the first place? To help utilities manage demand? I'd have thought they'd get a lot more than just "a sweepstakes entry" for installing a utility controlled theromstat though. Also, is 78°F really that hot? I live in Canada, but summers can get really hot. Yet I don't even turn on AC below 80° though maybe humidity is way higher there. Otherwise nothing seems particularly unreasonable here: a utility used a tool (designed to let it better manage peak demand) to do exactly that while only raising the temperatures pretty mildly. I wouldn't personally opt in into a remote controlled thermostat but if I willingly installed it or bought a house that already had it, I wouldn't be surprised when it does exactly what it is supposed to do

readthenotes1 5y ago
It is really humid in Houston so 78F without some form of cooling is pretty uncomfortable. Plus, I bet they're used to keeping it at 70...
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Humidity is definitely a huge factor. A/C acts as a dehumidifier. Another factor is the amount of IR being emitted by interior surfaces. If it's really hot outside (and the building isn't insulated to the latest top-tier building standards), the ceiling and walls can be radiating enough IR heat that a 78F air temperature feels quite uncomfortable.
  - syockit 5y ago
    I don't know much about how A/C works, whether the dehumidifier mechanism can be decoupled from the cooling mechanism. If it can't, then shouldn't the thermostat be coupled to a hygrostat so that that A/C runs when it is humid enough despite being cool in terms of temperature? On the other hand, today I learned that there's something called heat index and humidex.
    - pdonis 5y ago

throwkeep 5y ago

> “They’d been asleep long enough that the house had already gotten to 78 degrees,” English said. “So they woke up sweating.” This is silly. 78 degrees is not that bad and it’s literally what the Department of Energy recommends setting your thermostat to in the summer.

endisneigh 5y ago
To be fair the humidity in Houston is often above 80 percent even at night. 78 and 80% humidity would cause you to sweat profusely while sleeping under covers
- motles 5y ago
  what if they used a fan and didn't sleep under the covers?
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    That could work but you’d probably feel too cold, haha. The eco solution would be to get a whole house dehumidifier and a ceiling fan. But for those who already have central air that seems superfluous
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      Does an air conditioner use that much more power than a dehumidifier?
      - unishark 5y ago
        I think they're actually similar technologies and wattages. So really I think people are comparing using a room unit (being a dehumidifier) versus a central AC systems cooling the entire house.
      - robjan 5y ago
        They can be a lot cheaper. We commonly use them in HK to stop our flats going mouldy when we are out the house and it's 35C (90-95F) at 80% humidity. It's a lot cheaper, possibly an order of magnitude, than running the air-conditioning 24/7.

endisneigh 5y ago

It’s fascinating how little innovation there’s been in cheap air conditioning. For one, modern hvac is way too lossy by design. You spend thousands a year heating up an entire zone, which generally is your whole house unless you’re lucky enough to have zoned ducts and multiple air handlers. Even then you’re wasting a lot of energy cooling and heating areas you’re not even occupying. Mini-Split are too expensive to have installed by professionals. In the situation described in the article ideally the bed could be cooled somehow. Perhaps a device the size of a five gallon bucket filled with refrigerant circulating cool air around the bed somehow? Idk Edit: What I’d love to see is a window AC (Ptac maybe) that’s very large, say half a full sheet of plywood, so 4 x 4ft that’s 2in thin. Then you could actually fit this in like a window in between the walls. If it’s silent thru the use of an inverter it would be better than both a Mini-Split and a window ac due to the fact that it’s 16sqft footprint would afford it very large fans which could move the volume of air effectively silently.

ashleyn 5y ago
You would probably want to think about the design of the actual house more than thinking about gains in AC efficiency. There are unconventional home designs that passively make a home tend either cool or hot using the surrounding environment. Good luck dealing with the zoning board though.
- notimetorelax 5y ago
  They’re installing these [1] in the new buildings in Switzerland, it does keep the buildings comfortably cool. [1] https://www.jansen.com/en/plastic-solutions/products/geothermal-energy/thermal-earth-probes.html https://www.jansen.com/en/plastic-solutions/products/geother...
danuker 5y ago
> modern hvac is way too lossy by design I'd go further and say modern housing is unsustainable. Check out passive houses.
aulin 5y ago
Amazing how living in different parts of the world changes your perspective on everyday things, here (Italy) centralized AC is basically non-existent (and expensive), mini-splits are the norm but they're usually installed with a dedicated external motor for each room and very rarely with a single motor and a mini-split in each room.

del_operator 5y ago

Yikes, though this is why I appreciate my own sensor dashboard for home temp, pressure and humidity monitored by my Pi + enviro+. It’s pretty good about alerting me to temp changes. I now feel pretty sensitive to degree changes over 70, especially as relative humidity goes up over 45%. Dry air up to 74 I can handle with a decent ceiling fan. Houston at 78 would be higher on my discomfort index.

handoflixue 5y ago

His wife received an alert on her phone soon after that. The family said their thermostat had been changed remotely, raising the temperature of their home during a three-hour “energy saving event.” The family’s smart thermostat was installed a few years ago as part of a new home security package. Many smart thermostats can be enrolled in a program called "Smart Savers Texas." It's operated by a company called EnergyHub. The agreement states that in exchange for an entry into sweepstakes, electric customers allow them to control their thermostats during periods of high energy demand. --- Calling this "Shock" seems like some serious FUD. They signed up for this program, they got an alert at the time, and they were able to un-enroll after realizing the deal wasn't a good fit for them. There is absolutely nothing "sinister" about this. They literally enrolled in a program to allow exactly this behavior.

hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
They probably weren't aware of what they signed up for -- someone hid the details in the terms and conditions, which no one read. Because no one ever does.
- handoflixue 5y ago
  If that was the case, it's on the article / journalist to actually uncover and present that information. Beyond that, the article says they got an alert when it happened and later decided to un-enroll from the program, so I really don't see any grounds to assume bad-faith on the part of the people running it.
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  This isn't true, the email they send is very clear that it's a sweepstakes based on enrolling in a program to raise your temperature during high heat momemts to help your fellow Texans to avoid brownouts. In fact, the email begins by explaining how many heat deaths there are, how power outages affect vulnerable populations, and how if everyone could raise their temperatures 3 degrees during critical events we could avoid all of that. And then a clear call to action to participate.
5y ago

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

"Drivers shocked to find that device monitoring their driving behavior increased their premiums."

bfung 5y ago

These Demand Response programs have been around at least since 2013. I used to work for a company called Opower, since acq. by Oracle, that worked on setting these temperatures with options/configurations on the user end. OhmConnect, Tendril, Simple Energy, were/are all in this same DR space. Now granted, residential thermostats usually doesn’t have humidity detection, but any company doing DR probably has other sources of data already to figure out an optimal temp/humidity setting to drive better DR adoption. At the time, Opower had housing and demographic data to predict and calculate how long to pre-cool/heat a home. Glad Texas is catching up, but the marketing and user education part seems to be lacking. Need to change behavior & hearts and minds or this type of backfire happens. If no one participated in DR, outages and brown outs could kill more people than cause an inconvenience of being too warm.

neon_electro 5y ago
Why is/should participation in a demand response program be the difference between killing people and inconvenience? Wouldn't fluctuations in grid supply and demand make much more of a difference as far as there being energy for folks' survival needs? Shouldn't grids be ensuring they have sufficient supply so that no one dies? Why would we want to design a system where lack of participation in a demand response program means people could be at risk of death?
- bagels 5y ago
  Why should we allow people to live in places they will die without air conditioning?
  - bob1029 5y ago
    Its not about dying. Its about quality of life. Most things are at this point in our civilization. What if your furnace fails and you live in Alaska? Some Houstonians would probably assume that is a death sentence. Someone in Alaska would probably be fine. Uncomfortable, yes. Dead? No. More broadly, I find it incredibly contradictory that a technology board would approve of intentionally-shitty quality of service because the engineering "is just too hard".

ganzuul 5y ago

> Access Denied > You don't have permission to access "http://www.ksdk.com/article/news/remote-thermostat-adjustment-texas-energy-shortage/285-5acf2bc5-54b7-4160-bffe-1f9a5ef4362a http://www.ksdk.com/article/news/remote-thermostat-adjustmen..." on this server.

em-bee 5y ago
seems inaccessible from outside the US. it's archived here: https://archive.is/5Teif https://archive.is/5Teif
- ganzuul 5y ago
  > “Was my daughter at the point of overheating?” English said. “She’s 3 months old. They dehydrate very quickly.” Yikes! Here I was thinking about jokes regarding smart fridges... Thank you!

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

The State of Texas making you save energy. How ironic.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

TheGuyWhoCodes 5y ago

Enroll into a program to allow energy companies to modify your set temperature in exchange for a free thermostats or credits and be shocked when the energy company make good on the agreement... It's nothing new and have existed for years in Texas, this man didn't read the fine print and was just happy to get free stuff. This is called demand response programs and existed for years. It's a way to shave the peak instead of building a new power station. You usually get a notification in advance so you can opt out. This is nothing new and existed in the past in some forms. There are also programs to remote control water heaters (to turn them on at night when demand is low) by having special circuitry in the electric box. This will also be implemented more and extended as home EV charging stations pop up.