this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
233 points (98.7% liked)

News

23293 readers
3394 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Confused_Emus@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I loved those energy rush hour notifications for my thermostat over the last week. Go ahead, set my AC to 80. It was 85 in my apartment, so it still ran anyway.

[–] Spacemanspliff@midwest.social 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Wait. They can control your AC?

[–] 0110010001100010@kbin.social 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Many utilities offer bill discounts if you install a thermostat they can control during peak events. Some even will install radio-contolled switches on water heaters. Electric utilities have a VERY strong incentive to try and shave peak load during high-demand events.

Source: I worked for an electric utility. We even took our buildings off the grid and ran on generator during peak-load events. It was cheaper to burn diesel then contribute to the load.

[–] Soggytoast@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Probably all smart thermostats, but for sure at least the Google thermo will offer to enroll your thermo in a rewards kinda program. Will get money (100$/yr for me) for Google to lower your HVAC use during major loads. Also you get a warning before it happens.

A lot of power companies also offer pretty much the same thing, but they can control it. Usually you get a few over rides per year before some penalties.

It's a good idea and should probably be the norm, should probably just fix the grid instead of the bandaid too

[–] Uranium3006@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I think we should have hourly electricity pricing announced at least a week ahead and smart thermostats should be able to access this pricing info via an API and adjust usage accordingly

Not until we make the utilities public. They are hoarding record profits and not investing in the grid.

[–] Confused_Emus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Other replies pretty much covered it, but yeah, I have a Nest thermostat that I enrolled in Evergy's rush hour program that lets them adjust the thermostat during peak usage times. I can set it back lower if I want, but I then lose out on incentives (credit/discount on my bill). The only times I've gotten those rush hour notifications, though, have been on the hottest days where it's so warm in my apartment that, even when they raise the thermostat, my AC still runs anyway. I'm also on the third floor with a few westward facing windows, so I'm sure the program works better for others.

[–] Ryumast3r@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

California has a system for this too. They put an extra box on your compressor that allows the utility to shut it off longer but in return you get a discount on your summer bills (whether or not they actually use it).

The steepest discount is something like they can shut it off for up to 6 hours per "event" and you get $180. They have other ones though like up to 15 minutes every half hour for up to 6 hours total and you get $90.