Comments on: Warming up to climate control tech

"Clean technology" companies find that people are willing to give up control of their thermostats in exchange for a little savings.

[amigabill]

Discomfort degrades productivity

In my office at work, there are two ari ducts that blow diretly into my cubicle. Int he summer with the AC on, it gets rather COLD. We don't have control over this thing, and distracted attempts to improve comfort by redirecting airflow with wads of paper towels or sections of cardboard get removed and lectured about.

The other day a coworker needed my help with something. He sat in my guest chair for a minute, got too cold, and then stood outside my cube and we talked over the wall. Nearby cubicle dwellers wear jackets or sweaters in the heat of summer. After 5PM though, the AC often gets shut off completely and it then gets quite warm. People who otherwise would like to stay late and get things done get too hot and go home instead.

Being in it constantly and having grown up in a colder climate, I'm numb to it. Other people from warmer corners of the office sit there and literally shiver. It's silly to crank the AC up so high when people obviously don't want it and can't concentrate because of it.

Do managers really value some phantom savings they think they get from preventing people from being comfortable is more valuable than that of the lost productivity due to the resulting discomfort?

[Rusdude]

Your problems is unrelated...

I don't think your comment is related to this article. I work in an office environment too so I know all too well that temperature is often either too cold or too warm. This has happened in office buildings for years because companies (customers of energy companies) themselves try to save money.

This article, on the other hand, talks about utilities controlling the thermostat. Because electricity companies have many thousands of customers, they don't have to decrease/increase temperature by much to save power. I'm sure there's also a range on how much they can change temperature. For example, article mentioned 1.5 degrees -- most people won't be able to feel change of 1.5 degrees.

[Steve Jordan]

The idea is good... your office needs help.

No amount of utility control is going to help an office with a badly-installed system like yours to feel more comfortable. You need to have your office manager get on the stick and put in an efficient-running system, and they'd find they could save even more money on utilities than this article's program would manage. On the other hand, the progam in the article will barely register on anyone's personal comfort level, so it's akin to getting "money for nothing."

Personally, I think we'd be equally served by storing power in-house, instead of drawing it on-demand at all times. A battery- or capacitor-based storage system would allow users to draw power slowly, at non-peak times, and burn their own stored power first, evening out the high-demand periods that cause higher prices, and brownout/blackouts. But until we all have battery plants installed in our basements, this idea has serious merit.

[amigabill]

Discomfort degrades productivity

In my office at work, there are two ari ducts that blow diretly into my cubicle. Int he summer with the AC on, it gets rather COLD. We don't have control over this thing, and distracted attempts to improve comfort by redirecting airflow with wads of paper towels or sections of cardboard get removed and lectured about.

The other day a coworker needed my help with something. He sat in my guest chair for a minute, got too cold, and then stood outside my cube and we talked over the wall. Nearby cubicle dwellers wear jackets or sweaters in the heat of summer. After 5PM though, the AC often gets shut off completely and it then gets quite warm. People who otherwise would like to stay late and get things done get too hot and go home instead.

Being in it constantly and having grown up in a colder climate, I'm numb to it. Other people from warmer corners of the office sit there and literally shiver. It's silly to crank the AC up so high when people obviously don't want it and can't concentrate because of it.

Do managers really value some phantom savings they think they get from preventing people from being comfortable is more valuable than that of the lost productivity due to the resulting discomfort?

[Rusdude]

Your problems is unrelated...

I don't think your comment is related to this article. I work in an office environment too so I know all too well that temperature is often either too cold or too warm. This has happened in office buildings for years because companies (customers of energy companies) themselves try to save money.

This article, on the other hand, talks about utilities controlling the thermostat. Because electricity companies have many thousands of customers, they don't have to decrease/increase temperature by much to save power. I'm sure there's also a range on how much they can change temperature. For example, article mentioned 1.5 degrees -- most people won't be able to feel change of 1.5 degrees.

[Steve Jordan]

The idea is good... your office needs help.

No amount of utility control is going to help an office with a badly-installed system like yours to feel more comfortable. You need to have your office manager get on the stick and put in an efficient-running system, and they'd find they could save even more money on utilities than this article's program would manage. On the other hand, the progam in the article will barely register on anyone's personal comfort level, so it's akin to getting "money for nothing."

Personally, I think we'd be equally served by storing power in-house, instead of drawing it on-demand at all times. A battery- or capacitor-based storage system would allow users to draw power slowly, at non-peak times, and burn their own stored power first, evening out the high-demand periods that cause higher prices, and brownout/blackouts. But until we all have battery plants installed in our basements, this idea has serious merit.

[sanenazok]

DIY

Why let some third party siphon off a portion of the energy costs a consumer is saving by setting the thermostat higher? Just adjust the temperature yourself and get a $30 programmable thermostat. People are excited about getting a $5 check, but they must have saved the electrical company a lot more, and would have saved more had they just turned down AC themselves. Oh yeah I totally trust some third party company to give back to me what I saved.

[sanenazok]

DIY

Why let some third party siphon off a portion of the energy costs a consumer is saving by setting the thermostat higher? Just adjust the temperature yourself and get a $30 programmable thermostat. People are excited about getting a $5 check, but they must have saved the electrical company a lot more, and would have saved more had they just turned down AC themselves. Oh yeah I totally trust some third party company to give back to me what I saved.