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Swelter for the state

Posted 38 weeks 4 days ago by Ben

Regulators in California have slipped a rule into proposed new building standards that would give state officials the power to override home and business thermostats "in case of emergency." This is a phenomenally bad idea.

As Joseph Somsel at The American Thinker observes: "While nowhere in the Bill of Rights is there explicitly a right to set one's own thermostat to whatever temperature one desires (and is able to pay for), the new PCT requirement certainly seems to violate the 'a man's home is his castle' common-law dictum." Precisely.

According to the California Energy Commission's proposed efficiency standards:

All (Programmable Communicating Thermostats) shall be distributed with a non-removable Radio Data System (RDS) communications device that is compatible with the default statewide DR communications system , which can be used by utilities to send price and emergency signals.... PCTs shall be capable of receiving and responding to the signals indicating price and emergency events as follows. Upon receiving an emergency signal, the PCT shall respond to commands contained in the emergency signal, including changing the setpoint by any number of degrees or to a specific temperature setpoint. The PCT shall not allow customer changes to thermostat settings during emergency events. (pp. 63-64 in the PDF file)

    Translation: A bureaucrat will have the right to turn off Californians' air-conditioners and heaters when the state, in its wisdom, sees fit.

    And to be clear, "The (Programmable Communicating Thermostats) shall not allow customer changes to thermostat settings during emergency events."

    Now, there should be little doubt why the state is proposing this rule: California's energy and environmental policies are perhaps the most wide-ranging and restrictive in the United States. Everyone thinks the state deregulated the electric utilities in the late 1990s. Not exactly. California still has a supply-and-demand problem: lots of demand for electricity and diminishing supply.

    Fact is, there hasn't been a new power plant built in the Golden State since the mid-1980s, but population growth never stopped. The only real solution to California's energy woes is not ever-more intrusive state regulations, but actual private- and public-sector investment in new capacity.

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    Thoughts

    The regulators relent! Sort of...

    Submitted on January 13th, 2008 by Ben

    Jason mocks us poor proletarians who suffer 100-degree temps in the shade and bear the unyielding brunt of the Devil Winds. I'd love to turn my thermostat up during the summer. I could buy Apple stock with the money I'd save. But then my cats would burst into flames and I would drown in my own perspiration. Your solution, however, is not a bad one. Let's hear it for the black market!

    Happily, the California Energy Commission has evidently changed its tune on the rule and will let homeowners override the radio receiver. (The link to the story in the North County Times, which worked this morning, doesn't seem to be working now.) But what does the CEC's reversal really mean? Why have the rule at all? Well, because once you have programmable communicating thermostats in California households, it isn't difficult to foresee the Legislature passing a law conferring express authority to control homeowners' thermostats or -- more likely -- the CEC quietly changing the rule again at a later date. It's bad policy, any way you slice it.

    By the way, apropos of Allen's comment, the New York Times story yesterday included this patronizing paragraph:

    The fact that similar radio-controlled technologies have been used on a voluntary basis in irrigation systems on farm fields and golf courses and in limited programs for buildings on Long Island is seldom mentioned in Internet postings that make liberal use of references of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” and “Big Brother,” the omnipresent voice of Orwell’s police state.

      Voluntary programs are not unlike voluntary regulations. They're only voluntary insofar as people accept the rules in lieu of the threat of something much worse. We Californians may be forgiven for suspecting the worst of a state government that thinks nothing of abrogating individual liberties, including regulating the very air we breathe in our own homes. The state made this mess, first with the California Environmental Quality Act, then with "deregulation." The state needs to clean it up.

      Blowing hot air...

      Submitted on January 12th, 2008 by The Big Klosowski

      I can't imagine this being mandatory. However, in San Antonio there was an optional program that allowed the utility company to shut your HVAC off for 10-minutes max during peak period, and sold it to users as getting a 10% discount. Not really a discount at all, and they originally stated that it would be a 20% cost savings on the energy bill. I'm not sure I ever heard how successful it was, and there didn't appear to be any articles online.

      We need more power, cap'n!

      Submitted on January 12th, 2008 by jsnell

      I'm a power-saver who lives in a house without an air conditioner. (Advantage to living in the cool climes of Marin County.) However, if the Big Thermostat rules ever went into effect, I have to say that I would smuggle a dumb thermostat into my house. OPTING to let the powers that be use your house for load balancing? Sure. Why not. But mandating it? Madness. Would they like control over my light switches, too?