Google's Nest partners up with utility company – on smart thermostats Google’s internet-of-the-home subsidiary Nest has announced a partnership with a utility firm, offering its thermostats for free to customers of Electric Ireland. Announcing the deal at Web Summit in Dublin, Tony Faddell said that the partnership was the kind of thing he’d dreamed about when he started the company four years …
I'd just put up with the house being cold for a while! We've got a pretty complex CH system in our house with a couple of UFH zones and rads upstairs. We put in Heatmeiser stats 4 years ago and they're pretty good (they're wireless stats), the new ones they offer have the same sort of functionality as NEST. With ours you set what temperature you want and when, if its not that temperature in the room at the time you set the heating comes on, if it increases beyond the set temperature it goes off, simple!
I'm still unsure why it's such a boon to be able to control my heating from my phone when I'm in the pub
That's kind of a side effect. Nest learns about the thermal properties of your, err, property (how quickly it heats up and cools down, for instance) and also about how you live your life by detecting you (which is why it got interesting for Google - it's another step closer to HomeView, the inhouse version of Streetview); if it doesn't see movement for a while it can turn down the temperature too.
The app is basically to tell Nest that you may be in later, and by knowing the time it can work out when to start heating the house. You can use Nest without the app. I just hope you can use Nest also without an Internet connection, because there is NO way I will allow Google to receive any data from my personal life.
No it won't, really it won't. Cure for cancer, yes; end to world poverty, yes; enough food to feed the hungry, yes.
Turn the central heating up from your phone, no.
Now please exit the room and leave your ego at the desk marked over-inflated.
CPS here in San Antonio provides similar thermostats and when the electricity demand is too high they change your settings. Nest has something called Rush Hour which in the summer will make your house cooler before peak demands so that when it turns off during peak demand you are not uncomfortably hot. The utility company was offering a whole $30 to sign up for it.
"Nest has something called Rush Hour...... so that when it turns off during peak demand..."
We don't need that here in the UK, because we'll all be getting smart meters. One of the new joys these include is a maximum demand flag that can be set at different levels, and if exceeded it will cut off the power. All domestic mains connection in the UK should already have fuses or MCBs often 100 amp on 240V, so a theoretical maximum demand of 24 kW (not that I want to try that), but the thinking at DECC is that smart meters could typically set maximum demand at low values like 7 kW. If you want to use more instantaneous power then of course you can, but the smart meter has the capacity to not just limit capacity, but to bill on the basis of maximum demand (in addition to standing charge and per-unit costs). Throw in DECC's earnest ambitions to introduce both static time of use tariffs (perhaps three time zones per day, eightfold variation between off peak and peak charges), AND their hope to see dynamic time of use tariffs (ie the price varies every day and within the day, with at best a guidelines being texted to you 24 hours ahead), and it seems like energy is one area where technology is intent on making our lives more complex and more costly.
I'd say their basic desire is to simply bill you more, but make it so complex that you have no hope in hell working out how to reduce your bill or how to compare your bill to other providers.
In short, the aim appears to be the introduction of mobile phone style tariff games.
"I'd say their basic desire is to simply bill you more"
No. The energy suppliers do understand their own business, they know people don't want to have this shit of capacity charging, max demand charging, and time of use tariffs. The network operators have done some fantastic detailed research which concluded that such schemes won't work for them. Citizens Advice Bureau (now the official voice of the customer) know it's a pile of shit (their official position is far more considered, erudite and appropriate).
It is DECC and OFGEM (both government departments) who think this intended complexity is a great thing. Sucking on the the teat of "climate change" they both think everything they do will save the planet. So it comes down to a choice:
(1) "I worship the religion of human induced climate change, and any cost increasing complexity must help reverse or slow this evil."
(2) "Any position not in accord with (1)."
I'm not connected to this company at all, but as you are reading this you may or may not be aware of a BRITISH system with what appears to be some good engineering: http://www.heatgenius.com/.
If you dont like Google or British Gas plus want proper zoned heating give it a look.
I don't have this, I have TADO, but would love to remove tado, install this AND work with/for this company. If Simon or Alastair are reading this, reply to my LinkedIn messages ;-) CWS
I can't respond on that, but claimed 50% energy savings in their case studies look improbable unless compared to a scenario of zero energy efficiency and zero common sense. In my case a Heat Genius system would cost over a thousand quid installed, and (as an industry insider) I reckon if might at best save 10-15% of my £700 gas bill on a like for like basis. So it is touch and go as to whether it would pay back at all after allowing for interest.
I'd really like things to be different and to offer you a more upbeat response that this system will save you bucket loads of cash with no downside, but that's not how things generally work. If you live in an uninsulated solid wall property, have no thermostat and no timer on your heating then YMMV, and likewise if you're off the gas grid with an inefficient oil boiler than you might get lucky.
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