CO's turn to be in news for locking people's thermostats

[pixy0stix]

Thousands of Xcel customers locked out of thermostats during 'energy emergency' - www.thedenverchannel.com/news/contact-denver7/thousands-of-xcel-customers-locked-out-of-thermostats-during-energy-emergency

Same thing as TX, people voluntarily signed up, didn't think the company would act. *shrug*

FWIW, I'm sitting on my porch, it's 78 degrees, and I'm perfectly comfortable because we have fans blowing.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

[lahoagie]

This pisses me off so much. You got paid to be apart of this program that you voluntarily signed up for. I hate people.

[icedcoffee]

Read what you sign up for. I don’t feel bad for them. 🤷‍♀️

[mrspez07]

I think we’re part of this program, we got the new thermostat installed by xcel last year. I wasn’t at home on Tuesday but did notice earlier in August our thermostat was bumped to 80 or 82 and when I went into the app to check it mentioned something about an energy savings or peak use time and if I changed it I wouldn’t get the cost savings. I shrugged it off and went with it. It seems similar to the saver switch they had years ago attached to the ac unit.

[SusanBAnthony]

Sept 5, 2022 20:36:32 GMT -5 mrspez07 said:

I think we’re part of this program, we got the new thermostat installed by xcel last year. I wasn’t at home on Tuesday but did notice earlier in August our thermostat was bumped to 80 or 82 and when I went into the app to check it mentioned something about an energy savings or peak use time and if I changed it I wouldn’t get the cost savings. I shrugged it off and went with it. It seems similar to the saver switch they had years ago attached to the ac unit.

We have Xcel and we have a saver switch
It came with our house. Is that not an active program anymore? Maybe we just have it sitting there inactive?

[SusanBAnthony]

My eyes rolled out of my head reading his complaints.

I'm sympathetic to the actual danger of high heat but 2-3 hours at 82 is not that.

[mrspez07]

Sept 5, 2022 21:35:04 GMT -5 SusanBAnthony said:

Sept 5, 2022 20:36:32 GMT -5 mrspez07 said:

I think we’re part of this program, we got the new thermostat installed by xcel last year. I wasn’t at home on Tuesday but did notice earlier in August our thermostat was bumped to 80 or 82 and when I went into the app to check it mentioned something about an energy savings or peak use time and if I changed it I wouldn’t get the cost savings. I shrugged it off and went with it. It seems similar to the saver switch they had years ago attached to the ac unit.

We have Xcel and we have a saver switch
It came with our house. Is that not an active program anymore? Maybe we just have it sitting there inactive?

We had one that was on the AC when we bought the house 14 years ago, I never saw any note or information on our bills, so it may be tied to a person not an address. I was assuming they’d done away with it with the smart meters and new thermostats.

[taratru]

Sure Tony. Tell your 88 degrees sob story to literally any of the millions of people who do without. Poor baby.

[formerlyak]

It was 103 at the LA beach where I live this weekend. I grew up here and have never known it to be this hot in my city. It was the first time we have ever used our ac and we kept it at 78/79 - the same temp the guy in the article is whining about. And it felt just fine at that temp, even in the upstairs room that gets direct Sun.

I could see making exceptions for elderly who are sick. Like my dad who has stage 4 kidney cancer and was rushed to the hospital a week ago and they thought he was going to die. He’s home now and my parents kept their home a bit cooler so he’d stay comfortable. Things like that I can get behind. But regular people like me and you and the guy in the story? Nope. Do your part and stick to what you agreed to.

I feel not at all bad. The temp he’s whining about is not that hot. And he’s benefited from the savings. Dumb.

[rubytue]

Sept 6, 2022 7:20:40 GMT -5 formerlyak said:

It was 103 at the LA beach where I live this weekend. I grew up here and have never known it to be this hot in my city. It was the first time we have ever used our ac and we kept it at 78/79 - the same temp the guy in the article is whining about. And it felt just fine at that temp, even in the upstairs room that gets direct Sun.

I had similar thoughts. We keep it about 78-80, and that’s pretty much just to cut the Maryland humidity down to tolerable. I’ve never heard of anyone have heat related problems at 85 in the shade. 

[fernweh]

This reminds me of an issue we had a couple years ago. It was winter and I don’t remember the exact scenario but for some reason there was an issue at the natural gas place (refinery doesn’t seem right not sure what it’s called). I’m order to prevent some people being completely without heat they asked everyone to turn their thermostat down 5 degrees. People lost their damn minds. It was all over Facebook and the news people where turn their heat up an extra 5 degrees to stick it to the gas company. People are such assholes.

[pixy0stix]

I can kinda see the point that the person who has solar panels isn't part of the problem, but also... they signed up for the program.

[SusanBAnthony]

Sept 6, 2022 8:33:33 GMT -5 fernweh said:

This reminds me of an issue we had a couple years ago. It was winter and I don’t remember the exact scenario but for some reason there was an issue at the natural gas place (refinery doesn’t seem right not sure what it’s called). I’m order to prevent some people being completely without heat they asked everyone to turn their thermostat down 5 degrees. People lost their damn minds. It was all over Facebook and the news people where turn their heat up an extra 5 degrees to stick it to the gas company. People are such assholes.

This happened in MN maybe 3 years ago. We had a very extended -20 cold snap, and they have natural gas storage to deal with it, but the cold lasted long enough that they used the storage up, and asked people to turn down thermostats until the cold snap broke. Maybe we are remembering the same thing!

People suck.

[InBetweenDays]

Sept 6, 2022 7:20:40 GMT -5 formerlyak said:

It was 103 at the LA beach where I live this weekend. I grew up here and have never known it to be this hot in my city. It was the first time we have ever used our ac and we kept it at 78/79 - the same temp the guy in the article is whining about. And it felt just fine at that temp, even in the upstairs room that gets direct Sun.

Yeah, we don't have A/C because we live in Seattle and we used to never need it. The past few summers have been pretty warm but we sleep upstairs unless our bedrooms are above 83°. If it's over 83° we sleep in the basement where it's still usually 77-79°. 78-80° is definitely doable.

[formerlyak]

Sept 6, 2022 8:38:11 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I can kinda see the point that the person who has solar panels isn't part of the problem, but also... they signed up for the program.

I guess I see the person with the solar as being able to potentially help more. If they have solar and what they are generating isn’t all needed to power their house, wouldn’t it go back to the grid to help minimize strain on the system? I know my MIL’s system has batteries and once the batteries are full, it goes back to the grid. I don’t know a lot about how all the different solar options in various states work, so that may be just how LA DWP and So Cal Edison work.

[pixy0stix]

Sept 6, 2022 10:26:39 GMT -5 formerlyak said:

Sept 6, 2022 8:38:11 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I can kinda see the point that the person who has solar panels isn't part of the problem, but also... they signed up for the program.

I guess I see the person with the solar as being able to potentially help more. If they have solar and what they are generating isn’t all needed to power their house, wouldn’t it go back to the grid to help minimize strain on the system? I know my MIL’s system has batteries and once the batteries are full, it goes back to the grid. I don’t know a lot about how all the different solar options in various states work, so that may be just how LA DWP and So Cal Edison work.

Yes. His complaint was that since he wasn't drawing from the grid (at the time), his thermostat shouldn't have been touched.

[goldengirlz]

As the weather gets hotter and grids get overloaded, we’ll need more people to do this voluntarily to avoid blackouts.

But if the people who are offered an incentive are still complaining, this does not bode well for the rest of us.

[winecat]

It's 71 degrees in my house thanks to my swamp cooler which uses very little power.

[seeyalater52]

New England scoffs at 78/79 AC levels as a tragedy. People need to get a grip and absent a medical issue or some other concern just accept that they’re going to be a little (or a lot) hot in the summer and early fall.

[Deleted]

Sept 6, 2022 10:26:39 GMT -5 formerlyak said:

Sept 6, 2022 8:38:11 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I can kinda see the point that the person who has solar panels isn't part of the problem, but also... they signed up for the program.

I guess I see the person with the solar as being able to potentially help more. If they have solar and what they are generating isn’t all needed to power their house, wouldn’t it go back to the grid to help minimize strain on the system? I know my MIL’s system has batteries and once the batteries are full, it goes back to the grid. I don’t know a lot about how all the different solar options in various states work, so that may be just how LA DWP and So Cal Edison work.

The vast majority of people with solar don’t have any way to store it and it just goes into the grid. Personally, our solar panels only generate about half of the amount of electricity we use in the dead of summer (don’t know about winter yet), so there’s no extra anyway.

[mcppalmbeach]

I live in south Florida and it’s 91 today and my ac is set to 78 at home and it’s perfectly comfortable.

It does start to get miserably hot in the house over I’d say 82, but some of that is because of our humidity…the walls feel like they are sweating and everything feels damp. That’s worse than the heat for me. We belong to a similar program through our power company and it’s a three hour outage which is totally dealable in those temps. If you have an elderly person at home or a medical condition made worse by heat, you should not enroll in the program.

[fernweh]

Sept 6, 2022 13:14:45 GMT -5 mcppalmbeach said:

I live in south Florida and it’s 91 today and my ac is set to 78 at home and it’s perfectly comfortable.

It does start to get miserably hot in the house over I’d say 82, but some of that is because of our humidity…the walls feel like they are sweating and everything feels damp. That’s worse than the heat for me. We belong to a similar program through our power company and it’s a three hour outage which is totally dealable in those temps. If you have an elderly person at home or a medical condition made worse by heat, you should not enroll in the program.

I feel like for 3 hours as long as you didn’t open up all the doors and windows your home temps would maintain pretty stable anyway. Maybe I’m wrong but even if they raised temps to 78 it wouldn’t actually reach 78 in your house?

[nsl]

Sept 6, 2022 16:15:30 GMT -5 fernweh said:

Sept 6, 2022 13:14:45 GMT -5 mcppalmbeach said:

I live in south Florida and it’s 91 today and my ac is set to 78 at home and it’s perfectly comfortable.

It does start to get miserably hot in the house over I’d say 82, but some of that is because of our humidity…the walls feel like they are sweating and everything feels damp. That’s worse than the heat for me. We belong to a similar program through our power company and it’s a three hour outage which is totally dealable in those temps. If you have an elderly person at home or a medical condition made worse by heat, you should not enroll in the program.

I feel like for 3 hours as long as you didn’t open up all the doors and windows your home temps would maintain pretty stable anyway. Maybe I’m wrong but even if they raised temps to 78 it wouldn’t actually reach 78 in your house?

It probably depends on time of day/which way the house is oriented. For example, right now the thermostat in my west-facing house is set to 78, but I know it's over 80 in my living room due to the sun coming straight through the windows at 4:30 pm. A few hours ago it wouldn't have been above 78 in here, but this time of day it's unavoidable. No matter how low we set the thermostat, this part of the house is going to be hot until sundown.

[mcppalmbeach]

Sept 6, 2022 16:15:30 GMT -5 fernweh said:

Sept 6, 2022 13:14:45 GMT -5 mcppalmbeach said:

I live in south Florida and it’s 91 today and my ac is set to 78 at home and it’s perfectly comfortable.

It does start to get miserably hot in the house over I’d say 82, but some of that is because of our humidity…the walls feel like they are sweating and everything feels damp. That’s worse than the heat for me. We belong to a similar program through our power company and it’s a three hour outage which is totally dealable in those temps. If you have an elderly person at home or a medical condition made worse by heat, you should not enroll in the program.

I feel like for 3 hours as long as you didn’t open up all the doors and windows your home temps would maintain pretty stable anyway. Maybe I’m wrong but even if they raised temps to 78 it wouldn’t actually reach 78 in your house?

I think it depends on house orientation/time of day and other factors like insulations, windows, etc. but in my experience (broken ac, hurricane and other outages), it’s about 30 minutes before you feel it. But if they only raised it to 78, these people really need to get it together because that is totally a liveable temperature. I could happily be in the house at 79 during the day. It’s only at night that We need to turn it down a bit and we use a ceiling fan.

[Pibs]

We participate in Portland General's Peak Time Events, but my understanding is that we will always be able to override whatever setting they've changed our thermostats to. So far, we haven't and just suck up the house being a bit toasty between 82-84. I hate AC even though I won't live anywhere without it, so we really only turn it on when it gets over 90 outside because that's when our house starts to get warm enough inside to get a bit uncomfortable. I think we set the AC to like 78 because honestly cooling the house down a couple degrees from where it was at makes me feel cold.

Now that I covered the stuff that applies to this thread, does anyone live in an area where they proactively shut off your power due to wildfire risk? Because we found out two days ago that we do and haven't had power since noon yesterday. We've got a generator for the house, and it seems like if we run that for a couple of hours twice a day that our fridge is happy. And we just shocked the pool enough that it'll be fine since the pump isn't on the generator, but it's been an enlightening experience.

[msmerymac]

Hey! I’m in Italy now. In Bologna, our rental came with an info sheet that said there’s a law that the INDOOR temp has to average out to 27 degrees C (about 80) in the summer and the winter temp 22 C (about 71, which seems high, I’m comfy with a much lower temp).

You know, for all the MAGAts who think they’ll be mandated to lock their thermostats and install solar. I wish a MFer would.