If the house warms up, you have to go out and take the panel off, and look at the LEDs on the box? Not sure that idea sounds good.
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On the unit I had, the controller that was mounted on the condenser had a couple of LEDs. I would think they all would have similar indicators.
Obama can fix it!
He can empanel a commission, to....
Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus
Sure it would, but then you're depending on the good will of the people to program their thermostats so that their ACs don't run at peak times of the day. People aren't going to do it out of the kindness in their hearts.
Of course, that will never happen. Most people are going to say, "I want to be comfortable," and leave their ACs cranked 24/7. Then they will cry and complain about brownouts and rolling blackouts.
The only effective way to make this work is cash bribes.
A large part of the male population is red green color blind.
Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus
The rural power companies here in Nebraska use controllers on irrigation wells. The LEDs are red and green. Green means the controller is on and the power is off to the well. Red means the controller is off and the power is on to the well. It's a bit confusing. The labels on the controllers are illegible after a few years.
The lights are on the exterior of the controller units I've seen. I think they're usually on the bottom but I can't remember for sure. They're easy to see for people who can distinguish red and green.
to program their thermostats so that their ACs don't run at peak times of t= he day. People aren't going to do it out of the kindness in their hearts.
to be comfortable," and leave their ACs cranked 24/7. Then they will cry a= nd complain about brownouts and rolling blackouts.
Well yes it does, because you're talking apples and oranges. The subject of the thread is power rationing initiated on the extreme peak occasions when the power company needs to do so. It's implemented with a device on your AC that THEY need to control.
The programmable thermostat, well everyone knows what that does and it's not the above.
=A0 I use one and of
You could just adjust the thermostat like the rest of us instead of suffer....
lsd.org is a drug website! Just goes to show what this guy is using!
Anyone who posts about 50 times a day to alt.home.repair, and still cant figure out how to bottom post on a newsgroup, has to be on drugs. Some people just dont have a life!
It must be nice getting all that money from welfare, and spending life in front of a computer. The OP must be about 400lbs overweight from lack of exercise. Oh well, I'll leave so the OP can inject another syringe filled with drugs.
I live in Maryland near DC. I have A/C on the first floor and basement and a heat pump for the upper level. I get $50/month discount for the four months of May - August by allowing the utility to be able to shut off the A/C.
Two years ago during a heat wave, they shut it off from 11:30 AM - 7:00 PM. By that time, my upstairs thermostat read 91 F. That's not a typo. It got back to a sleepable temp by about 1:00 AM.
You just need to decide what's more important, saving a few bucks or having ensured comfort.
Yep, that's the issue. To do any good, they have to turn it off when you most need it.
The offer here is eight dollars.
I'm not worried about the comfort. I'm a hardy soul. I was concerned about whether the eight bucks a month would result in an eight hundred dollar repair bill in less than a hundred months.
I got one answer of NO, a couple more of "the things don't work" and a whole heap of programmable thermostats.
Saving money is nice, but they already owe me over a hundred, so it's certainly not a matter of need.
I never need it. But sometimes I want it.
For $50, a quarter of my highest month's bill, I'd probably do it. For eight bucks, not a chance.
Huh? The above doesn't parse.
Owe you?
But they are not supposed to turn it off for eight hours straight. The idea is to turn them off in groups for maybe 20 mins at a time, if necessary. Either something exceptional was happening or something screwed up. As I said before, I had one on mine here in NJ for over 10 years and never noticed any difference. It's going to depend a lot on the shape of the electric system in the area. But still, turning it off for 8 hours doesn't seem right. Wonder if he complained to the utility and what they said? You would think if they did that to people, most of them would say come take this thing off, end of story....
Do the math. If the power isn't off longer than the thermal time-constant of your house, it does zero good. There's a very strong correlation between how much you suffer and the goodness of decreasing peak load for the utility. And that happens at the peak load time when you most want the air conditioning.
If you turned mine off for 20minutes, I'd never notice, because it doesn't run that often. And the utility would have gained nothing because mine wouldn't have run anyway.
Take the energy saved while it's off. Subtract the energy used when it comes back on to bring the temperature back to where you want it. Unless the number is positive, or the recovery time is outside the peak load window, the utility gained nothing.
The way to solve the problem is to store heat (cold) locally. Cool a tank of water during off peak and use it to reduce the peak load. That trades efficiency loss for load leveling.
There is no free lunch...
That's not true. There are a lot of AC's that during peak demand days, ie when it's 100F out, could be running almost constantly for hours. Take folks that have setback thermostats for example. They have it set to come on at say 3 or 4PM so that the house will be cooled down by the time they come home. If the utility cycles say 1/3 or half of them to be off at a time, they have reduced their load. It clearly doesn't require turning off the AC for 8 hours straight to be effective.
The point is that I think it's very unusual for a utility to shut off your AC for 8 hours straight.
That's true if it doesn't run that often. But I'd say there are enough AC's running a lot so that cutting them back so they can only run say 20 mins or half the time will indeed make a difference. There's a big difference between that and cutting you off for 8 hours, which is nuts.
How practical is that?
So, did you call them up to find out if they actually intended to cut your AC off for 8 hours? Or if something went wrong? I had the same kind of system for over 10 years and never had any experience like that. Never had a single occasion where I could tell it was even activated. And if I did, and they told me that's how it's supposed to work, I'd call them up and tell them to remove it. Did you?
But they are not supposed to turn it off for eight hours straight. The idea is to turn them off in groups for maybe 20 mins at a time, if necessary. Either something exceptional was happening or something screwed up. As I said before, I had one on mine here in NJ for over 10 years and never noticed any difference. It's going to depend a lot on the shape of the electric system in the area. But still, turning it off for 8 hours doesn't seem right. Wonder if he complained to the utility and what they said? You would think if they did that to people, most of them would say come take this thing off, end of story....
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++My utility has three duty-cycle options if you choose to sign up:
100% - Get 100% of the $12.50 discount per unit (I have two units) if you allow them to turn it off for 100% of the time they have an emergency.75% - 75/75
50% - 50/50I had chosen the 100% option.
Now as for the question why off for eight hours, it was an exceptional emergency event. After the utility received complaints, they sent a letter of apology, and also thanked those who had the switch units. They claimed if nobody had them, there would have been rolling brownouts, it was that much demand, and those of us who had the units saved their day. I think the temp that day reached 104 F.
As to another thread, even when there is no cycling off, when it is hot enough outside, my upstairs heat pump can't keep up when running constantly, and the temperature rises above the set point while running continuously, until the outside temp lowers and/or the sun gets lower in the sky. And that unit is required only for my upstairs. I have drapes/shades. The thermostat is in the master BR, which has a cathedral ceiling with its own roof. The room (and rooms below) are on a side section of the house with a lower roof above the master BR, ie not under the attic.
If I remember right, the offer here (NY area- Con Ed) was that they'd turn the thermostat higher but the customer could always override it. I guess they figured some people wouldn't notice, wouldn't care or wouldn't be home, and that was sufficient.
I was part of that heat wave too. When people complained online, the utility originally said the AC was only off until 2:00 (or something) and then come to find out they supposedly immediately implemented some sort of second emergency cutoff. It was mid-90s in my house when I got home. Dogs were panting. Speaking of programmable thermostats, part of the deal was they gave me and installed one. Came in "handy" because they day they turned off the AC, they displayed some message to that effect on the thermostat! At least I knew my AC hadn't up and died on me.
Complaining aside, if the choice is between cycling the AC and having a blackout, I'd like to at least have the capability of running my ceiling fans rather than a total power outage. (My neighborhood gets enough of those at random intervals anyhow!).
spoiler alert...math below.
I don't think they even offer the option in Oregon. About the only choice we have is to pay a monthly fee so that we can pay slightly less for off-peak and more for peak consumption. If I signed up and moved 80% of my consumption to the 3AM time frame, I'd save just about enough to pay the fee.
There seems to be a math aversion in this thread.
Here's a simple calculation with numbers pulled out of my ass. You can publish the results with your assumptions...
If the utility has a peak capacity of 1000. And if the demand is 1100 And if air conditioning represents 500 of that load, you need to shed 20% of the air conditioning load. If 20% of the air conditioning load signed up for the shutoff option You need to turn ALL of them off for the duration. Note, I said 20% of the A/C load, not customers. Altruistic customers are disproportionately punished...and paid handsomely for the privilege. The utility paid you an insurance premium. It's time to pay the claim.
The person who quoted the 8 hour duration got exactly what he contracted to get.
Bottom line is that the grid can't support peak load in some areas. We either get more efficient and reduce the peak, or we suffer loss of power, incrementally or catastrophically.
If I weatherize to reduce my load, I'd still get hit with blackouts. If my tiny load signs up for a shutoff option, it provides proportionately less help for the utility. Ironically, the most frugal can help the least.
There is no free lunch!!!
This problem is more political than technical. If the anti-nuke people and the anti-wind farm people and the no power lines in my back yard people and the no hydro dams people would just get out of the way the situation would improve.
We need to have a vote on issues like nukes, wind, transmission lines, hydro, etc. Every time you vote no on one of them, your "number" gets incremented. You get to share in the shortfall proportional to your "number". That'd fix it real quick! My mom used to call it, "put your money where your mouth is."
Are they just turning it off for a while? The letter made me think that they were altering the waveform into the motor
That makes a bunch of assumptions designed to prove that it doesn't work. For example, just change the peak capacity overage from 1100 to 1050. Then the utility no longer needs to turn off all the AC's for the duration. What basis do you have that those numbers to run your "math" reflect reality?
More fundamentally, there is going to be a distribution of AC duty cycles out there. On peak days which are typicallly VERY hot days, a significant number are probably going to be running constantly, or close to constantly. If they throttle all AC's back to 50% duty cycle, the power usage by those units that were running 100% has been cut 50%. The AC's that were running 75% of the time are now running 50%, saving 33% there. The ones that were running 66% of the time are now running 50%, saving 24% there. If your AC was only running 50% of the time or less, then there is no power saving there. Taken together it all adds up enough to make a difference, without shutting everyone down for long periods or making them suffer. I'll bet there are plenty of houses out there with the AC running 66% to 100% of the time with it 72F inside. So, they wind up drifting up to 76F and the utility sheds some load. That is how it typically works, not by cutting folks off with no AC for 8 hours straight. And cumulatively it works, is significant enough, which is why utilities do it.
And from my experience, that is an exceptional case and
*not* how the system is typically implemented. It's *not* how the system here in NJ worked for the 10 plus years I had it. It's just plain dumb, because very few customers are going to tolerate it. I would bet 99% of them don't understand that their AC will be off for 8 hours. And once they have it happen once, they are gonna call the utility up to come remove it. No benefit to the utility for the cost of install, removal, etc and getting a black eye. Just because ONE utility is dumb, doesn't mean that's how it works everywhere.Have you ever had actual experience with such a system yourself?
No you wouldn't, unless you had an extreme nut case utility. Per my example above, if you're running your AC only 30% and the utility throttles everyone on the plan back to 30% to
50% duty cycle, you would see no effect. And again, that is how it typically works, not cutting folks off for 8 hours straight. Why do you insist on using the most pathological case?Apparently there is, because in the case you just cited you would be getting paid for participating in the program the same amount as everyone else. But if you you're frugal with AC usage, it doesn't impact you.
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