Austin Energy has created a new thermostat for your home that is controlled online. This next step toward — the internet does everything — allows homeowners to create thermo-schedules and access their air conditioning units from the internet.
The Good? It allows you to control your thermostat online! There are many positive implications from this: forgetting to turn your thermostat up when you leave, accessing your home before you get there so you can have the A/C kick on while you are in transit, etc.
The Bad? Austin Energy has a trade-off for this nifty free thermostat: You have to agree to some community energy control. This means that Austin Energy, during peak times, will be measuring the total energy consumption of the internet-thermostat group and making everyone miserable equally and shutting portions of the group’s A/C down in order to save energy. There is also the possibility of someone else controlling your A/C by accessing your account, although I doubt it would be too exciting for hackers to make you incredibly cold by running up your bill.
What’s Next? Accessing our A/C via mobile communications. We will be able to call home and set the temperature as we drive, or access our A/C via the control panel in our cars. Eventually our cell phones or something similar may be able to detect bio-signals letting it know what our temperature is, our heart rate, etc. These devices will communicate, along with our location and schedules what the A/C at home should be and what our preferences are.
The most interesting implication of devices like this emerging will be how other home appliances choose to participate. Will we be able to control our DVRs from the internet? Our oven preheating? Watering our plants? Pets? The potential is quite large and the sooner the better.
Now there’s something I didn’t know!
Thanks for the info Sir. Look forward to seeing more of your blog. Keep it up! Good job!
“Will we be able to control our DVRs from the internet?”
With TiVo you can already do this.