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Thursday, October 13, 2011

Smart thermostats can thwart wars, save U.S. jobs

This is one of the more amusing letters to the editor I have received for CE Pro magazine. This woman is responding to an article in which I pooh pooh energy monitoring, but tout energy management

Forget that she totally missed the point of the article. I appreciated her insights that home automation and energy management can thwart wars. More importantly, such technology could have saved her job at a law firm where she "didn’t speak their slang Spanish!"

I could have indulged readers by dividing up this letter into a neat arrangement of paragraphs, but ... if I struggled, so can you.

I have not put reading my CEPro off due to the volume in my work schedule this afternoon I read your article on “Energy Usage” believe it or not there is a scale for rating homes “green” I personally live in the Austin Metro Area and sell these energy management systems our system is programmed to virtually adjust or shut off things such as a water heaters, we have humidity control thermostats so that the fan runs and not both the fan and compressor we control the home from anywhere in the world from our phones.  Let me explain the A/C humidity control so you fully understand it’s not the heat that makes you hot or cold it’s the humidity.  You can survive in the Dessert for days with no water yes it’s 110 but there’s no humidity come on down here to Texas when it’s 110 we had record days in that range this year and find out how fast you are hot and dead at that heat! One of the greatest features is the energy consumption due to the raise in rates and the current economy a family can see a large savings. I personally gave a reporter a tour of my home this morning she was doing a piece on energy management integrated into the home automation she was in disbelieve at what my home was capable of to include closing the garage door at 8:30 pm or if opened after 8:30 pm it closes automatically in 10 minutes it is not only a safety issue but how much energy do you think we save in a year by not constantly opening and closing that door on a weekend?  Austin, Texas is in a record drought and my system can detect that we finally got rain this past week and did not water the lawn saving our water supply.  If my home is pulling a large load my subzero can be reduced. I can go on and on about the energy management I have by utilizing HAI’s Omni Pro II. I have kept copies of our utility bills pre home automation and post automation and then I proved the date we changed the thermostats and showed the savings and then I sat down the proof of when we added the module to the water heater and then set down electric bills. We went from an average of $450 a month and yes we have changed out our dish washer, oven and fridge to the latest greatest energy star units and we now have an electric bill that averages $130 a month now add that up over a year now or add that up over the life of the home and tell me what you think about energy management now. I can retire at an earlier age if I’m generation x who is demanding this product or have a better quality of life than my next door neighbor without it and I promise you that is happening at my home they scratch their heads and wonder how we own a big boat and utilize it every weekend while they sit home….your answer is energy management and we eat out once a week. We here in Austin are very green. The City offers tax incentives to builders to build green. Everyone focuses on the gas for cars, but who is focusing on the energy this country uses for our true energy hogs our homes!
"Our homes need to be energy efficient so we can end wars, close our borders so when I walk on a job site I don’t have to be fluent in Spanish."
This system has existed and continued to evolve and it’s the one true electronic that has not been outdated, depreciated to $0 in value nor in the bottom of a landfill.  Your reference is “Microsoft” who cares they are not truly in this industry and they are so far behind every time they launch another system it fails. I got an invite for yet another run at iControl today and laughed when they have come up with a system that you are going to control the volume of your tv with your cell phone really when you get a call if your phone is your remote how are you going to mute the tv? If you are speaking on your phone how are you  going to set your alarm or turn off your lights oh and what happens when little Johnny flushes down the toilet and your budget doesn’t allow for a new phone and there’s no insurance for water damage…my laundry list is a mile long for these guys there’s a reason they invite me to their “War Table” I think more people should think about energy control and more reporting should be focused on this country’s dependence on oil and offer incentives huge tax breaks to big company’s of bring the manufacturing back and consumer service back to an English speaking country that understands what your saying when a tornado hit your home! Close that border so that people in Texas and California don’t have to be bilingual to have a job and the true Spanish speaking non-tax payers work for $8.00 an hour driving the pay rate in Texas and California next to nothing and for the honor of living in Austin I have the high costs and was laid off after 25 years of service to a law firm because I didn’t speak their slang Spanish! When looking for another job I went from $35 an hour which is billable at $75 to my firm to if I was lucky a contract job for $15 an hour with no benefits, no holidays so let’s get to the bottom line it’s abusive. Our homes need to be energy efficient so we can end wars, close our borders so when I walk on a job site I don’t have to be fluent in Spanish. I am 25% Cherokee Indian and I had to conform because this country is accommodating the border. Honestly just bringing business back to the US will bring jobs you have to renovate and repair the factories not spend money on our roads that we subcontract out to companies in Mexico that can now hire illegal aliens that pay no taxes how do you refill the bank if you pay out and no one is subject to the taxes to put it back? My married name is ##### my in-laws are off the boat from Italy and did it the right way and pay taxes they speak English. I promise you when I bring this up at the Home Builder’s Association lunch tomorrow here in Austin they will just shake their heads and agree with me we need to save our energy resources and become less dependent on other countries bottom line. So when you write a story take an objective view of who your target audience truly is. Believe it or not this is the first time I’ve responded to an article. As you say “That, and Zune.
RELATED:
Microsoft Kills Hohm Energy Management: Whither Energy Dashboards?
Don’t Confuse Home Energy ‘Management’ with ‘Monitoring’
New Energy Dashboard Forgets Microsoft, Google Lessons
Microsoft Hohm Still Silly Even with Actual Product - CE Pro Blog

    

1 comment:

39CentStamp said...

Energy management is great and it saves you money but i really don't care much about it. I would rather our tax dollars be pulled from green projects and spent researching clean energy creation. I don't want to be told to dim my lights or buy specific appliances. If i want to give the power company more money every month thats my business. Solar power has been around for as long as i can remember. It's time to direct a few billion or trillion towards refining this technology so i can power turbine engines in my back yard 24/7 for fun if i want to.

The "fluent in spanish" comment cracks me up especially since Texas was Mexico long before any of us were born. Believe it or not... Some of the Mexicans around right now were Americans before your ancestors crossed the Atlantic. I would much rather have Mexicans here than the British. Does anyone remember the Tea Party? Not the crazy political movement of today... I mean the Boston Tea Party? I don't trust the British or their snarky Queen!

"English speaking country" is a hilarious statement from someone living in former Spanish territories. It's even more hilarious (or maybe sad) coming from someone who is "25%" native American. So i guess she was happy about her ancestors being slaughtered and forced to speak the invadors language? Wow?

Another funny bit is the mention of Budget and replacing a phone that little johnny flushed down a toilet. So there is room for an HAI automation system in the Budget but not room for a new Cell Phone? I have a better question. How do you control your home from the car with a hand held remote control?

The ramblings about the bank being refilled with tax dollars is a joke right? Tax dollars did "refill" the banks and they are hard at work building yachts and passing out bonuses because they know that tax dollars will "refill" them the next time they gamble away all of OUR money. For the record... Americans DONT WANT our tax dollars going to the banks. Our tax dollars should be going towards education, infrastructure and defense... In that order IMO.