22,000 smart thermostats in Colorado locked over ‘energy emergency’

Specifically, one that offered them incentives in exchange for some degree of remote control over the smart thermostats. Those customers, for example, get a $100 credit at sign-up, and $25 each year.

It seems that customers were aware of that because of the participation benefits

This is fairly common with other utilities as well, my local utility did the same thing a few years ago.

But, I am also probably biased: I signed up for it without knowing that they were paying me to do it; I was happy to cooperate in the case of grid stress, without knowing that I was going to get paid for it.

This feels a bit like this guy is saying "Where is my freedom to make brownout or blackout?" :-)

You save 15% on power during the summer months for participating.

In 20 years I’ve only noticed it a couple times.

It has been a good deal for me.

I'm sure there must be a good reason, but next month the nest is going to end up on ebay (or the trash?) and be replaced by a "dumb" thermostat.

The google nest was too smart for its own good :)

Too cold inside? Fashion a bubble wrapper and an ice pack around your thermostat.

Learned this at an employer that kept its thermostat under lock and key.

We need to state the principle that ONLY public bodies can act on public, private parties can ASK, can eventually propose different tariffs to incentivize or disincentivize certain behaviors but MUST NOT have any control at all. The danger of founding a car who initially start to display ads, than make seeing them mandatory just to open the door, than get briked from remote is so high that any potential step in this direction must be nuked with an extraordinary excessive and fierce force.

Beside that: a general regulation even from public bodies is an issue sometimes because you need mechanisms to avoid it, for instance for medical reasons case-by-case (in this thermostat settings case), but if such mechanism do exists surely get abused. So in the end my idea is that if something is needed but scarce than can't be private at all. So for instance TLCs, energy grid, water etc can't be given to private company at all if they can't guarantee full services all the time with the sole exception of extraordinary events that can't last more then a very little time (like a flood, a storm etc vs "eh, there is a global crisis who might last years").

Until we have viable energy sources that are carbon free and sustainable without major risks like past nuclear implementations we need to get used to this or the problem will get far far worse.

"Don't be ridiculous that 'smart everything' is about spying and putting even more power into the hands of unelected government officials!!"

Maybe the utilities should be crediting the value of the electricity the customer is ‘saving’ during these peak hour ‘crises’.

The way this is written, there is nothing to disincentivize the utilities from creating artificial shortages because the people wholesale price for electricity is ‘too high’. The only way I can see for this to be balanced is to credit the retail value of the electricity being withheld from the customer.