Comment by tenpoundhammer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tenpoundhammer | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if the wording is purposely dubious as to mis-lead the reader, but it's certainly not clear.

"The company has negotiated deals with multiple energy partners in the U.S. Some utility partners are willing to spend $30 to $50 per year and per thermostat to be able to turn the air conditioner up when it’s a hot day. This way, the utility can levels load on the grid. "

At first glance it would appear that the author is saying that Nest will make your air conditioner produce more cold air on a hot day, but the following line contradicts that.

How would it level the load to use more energy? It wouldn't.

I think the actual conclusion, is that Nest is working with energy suppliers to increase the temperature on the thermostat, which will reduce the power used by air conditioners, and that this occurs at peak power usage.

Which will save the nest owner money, the power company money, and make Nest as a company some money.

Moreover, this probably occurs at an imperceptible level to the user, or is done while they are presumably gone. Also the Nest User can turn it back down manually if they are there and uncomfortable.

This is bad sensational reporting.

> At first glance it would appear that the author is saying that Nest will make your air conditioner produce more cold air on a hot day, but the following line contradicts that.

The wording is odd, but "turn the air conditioner up" = "raise the trigger temperature on air conditioning", that is lower the amount of air conditioning. An other option is to spread up- and down- time across users so if everybody wants 10mn of airco per hour, 16% get it in the hour's first 10mn, 16% in the next, etc… instead of everybody being on the clock.

See http://support.nest.com/article/What-is-Rush-Hour-Rewards

"the utility can levels load on the grid."

Probably better stated as 'peak shaving' where the utility is lowering the peak (maximum) of its load profile. This pays significant dividends as utilities are required to have a certain amount of generation as backup in addition to the required power.

It would take a significant amount of homes to equal one heavy industrial customer.

that's the ambiguity in saying "turn the AC up", do you mean " turn the temperature up" or "make it work harder and cool the house down more"...

i would not be happy at all if i had a Nest and set it to say 78 and the electric company says, "no that's too low, bump it up to 83 or so..."

I'm pretty sure that the wording is wrong and the author meant that nest will automatically turn the air conditioning down (i.e. let the temperature rise in the house, reducing air conditioning load) - at least that's the information that comes across from the referenced Forbes article.

From what I understand, they turn the AC on earlier in the day when they know it will be a hot day, which smooths out the peak demand when everyone's AC would have turned on at the same time later in the day.

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