Alphabet's 'Renew Home' Company Brings Power Grid Data To Your Smart Home (arstechnica.com) 30
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's parent company, Alphabet, is launching a new company called "Renew Home." The new company will pull in some other projects from Nest and the rest of Alphabet to become a supposed one-stop shop for power savings and clean energy usage. The core concept is partnering with power companies to obtain data about the current condition of the power grid and using that data to change consumer habits. The new company is bankrolled by Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), an Alphabet venture capital firm.
The first existing service getting pulled into Renew Home is Nest Renew. This service for Nest Thermostats uses power company data to tell consumers how their electricity is being generated and what it costs. That data lets your thermostat do things like automatically shift heating and cooling to times of day when energy is cheaper or cleaner, and shows various reports about the cleanness of the energy you've been using. (Nest's feature that lets utility companies remotely take control of your thermostat, Rush Hour Rewards, does not seem to be part of Renew Home.)
Another Alphabet service being pulled into Renew Home is OhmConnect, which is the same basic idea as Nest's grid data-power thermostat adjustments but for more than just your thermostat. OhmConnect is compatible with a very small list of smart devices, like Nest-rival Ecobee and Honeywell thermostats, TL-Link's "Kasa" smart home system, and Tesla vehicles. The backbone of the service appears to be the in-house "OhmPlug" smart outlet, which can monitor the energy usage of anything that plugs into the wall. By seeing that you've turned these smart devices during peak usage times, OhmConnect offers people rewards like gift cards or cash for not using power when the grid is at capacity.
The first existing service getting pulled into Renew Home is Nest Renew. This service for Nest Thermostats uses power company data to tell consumers how their electricity is being generated and what it costs. That data lets your thermostat do things like automatically shift heating and cooling to times of day when energy is cheaper or cleaner, and shows various reports about the cleanness of the energy you've been using. (Nest's feature that lets utility companies remotely take control of your thermostat, Rush Hour Rewards, does not seem to be part of Renew Home.)
Another Alphabet service being pulled into Renew Home is OhmConnect, which is the same basic idea as Nest's grid data-power thermostat adjustments but for more than just your thermostat. OhmConnect is compatible with a very small list of smart devices, like Nest-rival Ecobee and Honeywell thermostats, TL-Link's "Kasa" smart home system, and Tesla vehicles. The backbone of the service appears to be the in-house "OhmPlug" smart outlet, which can monitor the energy usage of anything that plugs into the wall. By seeing that you've turned these smart devices during peak usage times, OhmConnect offers people rewards like gift cards or cash for not using power when the grid is at capacity.
But why? (Score:2)
What good is it to shift the heating of your home to when energy is cheap rather than when it is cold?
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About the only time I could see this type of time shifting being helpful is with a water heater. If I have a 40-gallon water heater and it finds I have 10 gallons of water needing heat (bottom of tank) and 30 gallons of hot water, then it can delay the water heater until the grid is not at capacity or rates are low. If the water heater has 30 gallons of cold water and only 10 gallons of hot, then it might allow the heat to begin immediately but pause when the hot water capacity reaches 20 gallons, then he
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It's amazing that this needs to be explained.
Home temperature rises and falls with a lag time of hours.
Grid demand varies much faster.
By timing heating use, you can save money with minimal inconvenience.
Same for A/C.
The core concept (Score:5, Insightful)
The core concept is partnering with power companies to obtain data about the current condition of the power grid and using that data to change consumer habits.
...and most importantly, datamine the living shit out of your daily life at home and using that data to sell to advertisers.
Whoever signs up for a Google smarthome isn't right in the head.
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You want to save electricity? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't run smarthome garbage.
I have a bunch of the old TP-Link HS110 smartplugs (the ones that could be controlled without TP-Link's stupid cloud) and those things burn 20W to 30W just sitting idle. Of course, they're like little computers, complete with a WiFi AP and enough processing power to talk to a remote HTTP server - just to turn a relay on and off...
Run a dozen of those things in your home, and smart lightbulbs, smart thermostat and whatever other ridiculously overpowered little computers to perform a single trivial task, add a router, and before you know it, you're running the equivalent of a space heater 24/7. Not to mention the hidden energy cost of those remote cloud servers turning your lights on and off from the other side of the planet.
Wanna save energy? Ditch the smart and use regular switches - or if you can't be bothered to get off the couch, some simple infrared switches with a remote that don't required a friggin' computer and the entire internet to do their thing. And as an added bonus, you'll be glad to know you're not part of the the cloud insanity.
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X10 is still around. And there are WiFi and other protocol bridges that work with it and other wireless control standards.
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20W to 30W sitting idle??? Really? They should just be ESP32s with wireless hardware. I'd have expected them to use a couple of watts at most at idle. And this site [tpcdb.com] concurs.
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My smart plugs, which are local only and run open source firmware, consume less than 1W at idle.
This new product fun alphabet is similar to ones already running in the UK, such as Octopus' smart tariff. It works really well - you get significant discounts in exchange for time shifting stuff like EV charging and washing clothes.
If Alphabet's one is useful, I might sign up. Obviously not going to opt in to any analytics, and I block all their ads anyway.
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Obviously not going to opt in to any analytics
I don't think you'll have any meaningul choice in the matter. Whatever privacy setting Google will give you will almost certainly be a placebo button. Google ALWAYS collects data, whether you want it or not.
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I've asked you before for any evidence if that, and you always come up empty. It would be the biggest ever GDPR violation, and I personally would be looking for significant compensation, beyond the massive EU fines.
It's possible that Bill Gates put a chip in my COVID vaccinations too, but unless you have some good evidence of this massive undetected crime then I'm going to assume not.
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The evidence is the very existence of most Google services, which are offered either for free or at very low cost: they're only profitable if Google monetizes the data people surrender to use those services.
If Google couldn't profit from people's data collected through those services, the services would not be worth running, and Google would stop running them. They don't, so they can.
Google's entire business model is offering extremely attractive apps and services to attract people like moths to a light, so
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Why can't Google make money on ads, instead of illegal data theft? You know ads don't HAVE to be targeted, or can be targeted based on page content and search terms, right?
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I didn't say the data was stolen or the data collection illegal. Arguably it should be, but it isn't.
My beef with the corporate surveillance economy is that there is no alternatives: if you want a service nowadays, you have to submit to your data being collected, even if you don't want to.
For instance: I would LOVE to pay Google for all the Youtube videos I consume. They only ask 10 euros per months and I think that's very fair. But I can't, because I'd have to create a Youtube account for that, and that me
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I guess you don't live in a GDPR country, because what you described is illegal in them. YouTube has to obtain explicit, opt in permission to sell your viewing habits to the highest bidder. Of course they don't actually want to do that - why would they sell their most valuable asset when they can leverage it to make even more money?
Google doesn't care if you opt out. Plenty of people don't, and even if you do they do get to show you ads. Maybe more ads, to make up for any revenue loss.
For no ads use Sponsor
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I guess you don't live in a GDPR country, because what you described is illegal in them.
What you describe is fairyland and does not exist.
Again, if what I describe was illegal in Europe, Google's services would be unprofitable in Europe and Google would pull them out in Europe. But they don't, so they're profitable. Therefore Google collects data from European citizens and sells it.
The logic is inescapable, however much you'd like to believe the GDPR has any impact on Google. Stop dreaming.
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You seem to be saying that non personalized ads are unprofitable, but clearly that's not the case as lots of businesses that use them successfully. TV and radio stations, for example.
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"TP-Link HS110"
You chose a product that specifically does more than turn on and off. The continuous energy monitoring means it can never be idle.
This will be awesome (Score:3)
That is, until Googlebet or Alphadoodle or whatever abruptly tosses this one on its graveyard [killedbygoogle.com].
It doesn't learn (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not defending Nest, but it's a myth that it costs less to keep the heating/cooling on all the time. It's cheaper to only use it when you are in.
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Increasing the difference between inside and outside air increases the rate at which heat is exchanged, so running the AC while you are out costs more than running it when you need it.
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Re:It doesn't learn (Score:4, Informative)
I've had a nest thermostat for over a year now. It doesn't learn from me - Google tries to manipulate and train me. Even worse, Google directly disregards what I have specifically set it to do and imposes it's own set of what to do in what situation, and it gets it wrong. I have two chow chows; furry dogs that can't take high temps. Set the nest for 78, which is too warm already, and went out for errands for almost 3 hours on a sunny, 85 degree summer day. Google decided I wasn't home so it didn't turn on the air conditioning. My dogs almost had heat stroke. Same shit in the winter; if I don't walk past the thermostat for over an hour, Google stops heating the house & I get cold. Another problem: Google turns down the heat at night. FUCK THAT. I have set this monster to 72 degrees every time I get up, multiple times every night, yet Google doesn't learn jack diddly like it claims. I would use LESS gas to heat my home if the temp was just plain steady rather than argueing with me and burning gas for a long time to bring it back the where I had set it in thie first place. I truly plan to replace this curse with something that will do what I tell it to do, and I will remove this pestilence with a sledge hammer.
There. Fixed that for you.
Because it's worth pointing out in your story that the Nest isn't actually doing or deciding anything: Google does. Your Nest thermostat is Google's trojan in your house.
Not well thought out. (Score:2)
"That data lets your thermostat do things like automatically shift heating and cooling to times of day when energy is cheaper or cleaner,"
Energy here would be cheaper at night, so in the winter the idiot thermostat will turn up the heat after midnight while I'm asleep. In the summer it will turn on the AC at night when I have the windows open because it cools off as soon as the sun sets and will be 50 (F) by morning.
The only place that would be useful is a water heater, and there are simpler ways to do that
Sounds like what HomeAssistant already does (Score:5, Insightful)
LMFTFY (Score:2)
Alphabet brings your smart home data to their databases.
Never gonna happen.
Happy with my dumb house (Score:2)
No thanks (Score:1)