TOO SMART?: Programmable thermostats may be proving too difficult to program correctly to save energy
Image: montgomerycountymd.gov
Programmable thermostats, which now make up about half the U.S. sales of all thermostats, could be more trouble for some than they're worth.
A study led by Alan Meier, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, concluded that in many cases, these Energy Star-labeled thermostats are making it hard to save energy. The reason is many people don't know how to use them.
Programmable thermostats allow users to automatically set them at lower temperatures when they're asleep or not at home. A typical setting could have the thermostat switch 10 to 15 degrees lower at night or during the workday but stay at normal levels when people are at home and awake. Programmable thermostats are supposed to make this process simple for users while reducing their energy consumption by 10 to 15 percent.
But many people aren't taking the extra step required to make the energy savings possible, according to the study.
"Many people think that simply installing these would save energy," Meier said. "A programmable thermostat requires installation and then correct settings, then periodically you need to reset it."
A big part of the equation is the difficulty of proper use. Many people don't understand how the thermostats are used, Meier said, although they might be using them in a way they think they understand without realizing they're not saving energy.
Meier and his researchers found that roughly half of the people they surveyed had their thermostats set on hold, mistakenly thinking they were working properly. Leaving a thermostat on hold essentially cancels any preprogrammed settings.
Twenty percent of respondents had the wrong time set by over an hour on their thermostats. This also keeps them from working properly.
Experts find them easy to use, but not others
Meier and his team gathered the research through a series of small studies. First, they collected data from 20 low-income homes in Minnesota that were being "weatherized," or upgraded by public assistance with energy efficient items. Meier asked the crews working on these homes to photograph the thermostats.
Then the researchers used the online public marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk to offer $1 to those willing to submit photos of their thermostats and fill out a questionnaire about how they use them. They gleaned about 100 responses within two days.
They next brought in 32 people to their lab to watch them physically work with five different thermostats. The researchers asked the people to perform the "tasks they need to do to make the thermostats work," Meier said.
Some brands of thermostats were easier for people to work with than others, although Meier said he wouldn't "name any names." But all of them ranked as easy to use in respected consumer reports, Meier said. To him, that's not surprising.
"These are experts testing these in a well-lit room with a table," he said. "Most of the time thermostats are in cramped areas with dim lighting."
Meier said his approach to measure usability could catch on and be used for many other products. One he mentioned is controls for lights, especially in commercial buildings.
"We're used to this idea of idea of a light switch, but in fact, it's becoming much more complicated than that," he said.
He plans to delve into light controls soon, but first he's going to do more work with thermostats, he said.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
See what we're tweeting about
17 Comments
Add CommentAs always, there's no way around stupidity and/or laziness. RTFM.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a poor designer that blames the user.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not make thermostats part of a home's Wifi network and then have a browser-based GUI with easy-to-understand controls? Though I agree that users could pay just a bit more attention to the time/temp setting procedure, I also agree it's poor design--or at least not very creative--to have a crappy interface. It's also bad business to pass up opportunities to capture market share by simplifying use. So, who wants to be the first to market a browser-programmable "smart" thermostat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are already some on the market. Some of Radio Thermostat's products have WiFi built in. Proliphix and Bay Web both make IP thermostats as well, but these require hardwired LAN connections. Try searching for "IP thermostats" and you will be suprised.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn order to use this stuff correctly with custom settings, you would have to firstly research what pattern is actually cost saving (in many cases, hold is actually an improvement to any kind of cycling), then tailor it to your schedule so that you are comfortable, then work out different schedules based on the season and on top of that you would have to get this thing to work right with no user manual and no more than about 30 seconds of patience for the average user. In hot climates, where the AC is running, the AC unit itself can be controlled by a power management service that turns it off during peak hours. However, when it's 110 degrees in California, you really want AC. Even running full time the unit can only get it down to about 85-90 inside in that kind of heat, and if you let your house heat up and try to cool it down again you burn more energy than if you just let it run, and the units are sized so it takes many hours to cool down the house in order to prevent mildew. The unit should have an indoor and outdoor thermostat, a date-time record, and a super simple multiple choice set of usage profile. Like Home, Work 8-5 M-F, or away. Custom settings can exist, and be complex, but for the standard user, we need super simple and graphically obvious or "Hold" is all that gets used. Then you set the temperature you want, and the unit should figure out the most cost effective way to achieve it. Not a big fan of web enabled control. That just spells hackers blowing out our electric grids by synchronizing rapid fire on and off cycling of AC for tens of thousands of houses at once. Minimal energy saved is just not worth that kind of exposure in my opinion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with your article,as an HVAC Technician, I do service whether in small businesses or homes and in almost all cases the t/stat is on hold or not programmed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI take the time to program it and instruct the owner, they are easy to program and they should be checked by the owner every 6 months. If the t/stat is not wired to the 24V common, then only the batteries run it. Batteries die, t/stat dies, costly service call. Most people think the thing runs by itself. They don't read the manual.
During the installation of a new system, technicians should take the time to instruct the customer, this is done by some and not by others. Depends on the experience, professionalism and knowledge of the technician. It's a shame though, most people would save money just by reading a manual and doing a few minutes of simple step by step inputs of time and temperature.
If people are too lazy to read the instructions that is not the designer's fault. What's more, there is no such thing as "idiot proof". The idiots are a creative and persistent lot. They are able to resist all types of information and common sense. As the old saying goes, there is no task so simple that it can't be done wrong. In the prehistoric past these people would have been taken out by sabre tooth cats or even clever rabbits, now they get jobs in middle management.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a professional engineer living in a 75 year old house in upstate NY that has a natural gas fired furnace with steam radiators. There is an old fashoned Honeywell, mercury thermostat that is easy to turn down in the evening and turn up in the morning. How hard is that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is focused only on one technology (programmable thermostats) and one class of users (low income). It is missing the comprehensive user survey and assessment of all technologies. Besides is this scientist crazy to state the the nightime setting should be as low as 53 degrees F (68-15)? My wife grew up in a farm house without central heat, who went to bed with a stove heated stone, and the glass of water by her bedside would have an ice surface by morning. Who does that these days?
Cell phones, fancy thermostats, weather stations, even my Timex watch I use at the gym would be a whole heck of a lot easier to use, if you could hook them up to your computer, and have a big screen on which to figure out things. If they were really well done they would also go online and update as necessary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think it is wise to put all of your eggs in one basket. Putting everything on your computer would also expose it to malware and hackers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe installed a geothermal heatpump last fall, it came with a "programmable" thermostat. Love the geothermal, hate the thermostat. It might be useable if the manual that came with it were somewhat understandable, it refers to other sections and uses such obtuse language that I get lost. I have written dozens of programs in basic,SAS, and created a few web sites so I don't think I'm a techno-idiot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuch smart thermostats are far from “smart”, yet they are already out-smarting us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith truly intelligent robots in the offing, can we really cope?
Would we not be enslaved ultimately? Rather scary. (vzc1943)
I bought my first programmable t/stat in 1984. Replaced my furnace and central air about 6 months later (they now rate as antique, but then were state of the art), and had to replace it in 1988 due to (PSE&G report) squirrel damage to high tension lines.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can program 6 different levels for each day of the week. Most available today only give 4 settings and not for individual days. I do have to reprogram the unit for heating and cooling seasons, but that only takes a few minutes, and remember to change the time each spring and fall. The closest I get to computer control of the unit is keeping the list of heating and cooling settings, which I've changed here and there over the years, tucked in the door of the unit.
Probably when I replace the HVAC equipment in the next year or two that will also mean one of those new thermostats that are touted as enhancing energy efficiency sild with the systems.
My electric company offered a "Cool Customer" plan in 1994 that put a radio controlled switch on my outdoor unit and saved me a few dollars each month during the cooling system. It shut off the compressor during high energy demand on hot days on a 15 minute cycle. When they finally used it on an extremely hot and humid day in 2001, the temperature inside went over 80 and the humidity was near condensing levels (the inside fan keeps running, pushing the condensate in the A-coil back into the house!). Having asthma I could hardly breathe, so I had the program cancelled.
Last month PSE&G sent out a mailing pushing their new "Cool Customer" program. A new $250 dollar programmable t/stat, and a $50 credit, or just the cycling unit and a $4/month credit June-September with a $1 credit each cycling event.
I called the customer service line and was told I couldn't have the cycling without the fan running, which caused my original humidity problem, and wrote a letter to the company on March 14 with no answer yet!
I'll stick with my 22 year old Honeywell/Magicstat MS3000 until my next system upgrade.
Properly set up firewalls and security software will protect you against that. My Norton 360 has caught all malware intrusions, and recently with a malware email that made it through, it caught the malicious address when I carelessly clicked on the link in the email while going through my seemingly endlessly growing inbox.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd who holds a gun to the users head and makes them follow the instructions? Who explains to the user what energy saving hours are? If you default it to low temp during regular work hours then you will have a flood of service calls from people complaining that the thermostat doesn't work at night or during the day. I have also developed interfaces and it is amazing how clueless people can be. The thing I often find is that clueless people also tend to be lazy people. They are clueless because they don't take the time to understand. I have learned from bitter experience that there are some people who couldn't figure out how to use a hammer even if you gave them a popup book for instructions and an hour long demo. They wouldn't read the book, fall asleep during the demo and complain that the hammer just wasn't built for ordinary people to understand. If people aren't smart enough to work their thermostat then how do we expect them to make informed choices at the polls? Don't people have some responsibility to be informed?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHad the air conditioner replace last year along with the duct work and new insulation...the new thermostat even has a humidity control...I also don't need to worry about switching between heat and cool...all taken care of...and guess what...it even observes the time changes correctly....updating/modernizing has its cost but it also has it benefits....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishave any of you heard about Pelican Wireless Systems thermostats? They look like they are easy to install and program. I know I have trouble with my current "programmable" thermostats, I think I might order a few of these internet programmable ones, being that they look really inexpensive and simple to operate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this