California Scraps Plan to Control Residential Thermostats

A couple of days ago, we reported that California had been thinking of mandating government control of residential thermostats (read original article). Due to public outcry over the proposal, it has been dropped, and instead, utilities will work on possible voluntary programs by which customers could request a utility or government-controlled device.

New building-efficiency standards drawn up by the California Energy Commission would have required new buildings to include remote-controlled thermostats that could allow public utilities to control a building’s air-conditioning or heating thermostat setpoints during power emergencies.

When public opinion turned out to be unfavorable towards the new standards, officials backpedaled and said the regulation would be revised so that the devices would still be required, but could be configured so that customers could override outside control by utilities.

This was still not enough for the public, so the agency has now announcing that the proposed remote-controlled thermostats will be dropped entirely from their next edition of Building Efficiency Standards.