What is Smart thermostat

Smart thermostats are Wi-Fi thermostats that can be used in home automation to control a home's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.They perform similar functions to programmable thermostats in that they allow users to control the temperature in their home throughout the day using a schedule, but also incorporate additional features such as sensors and Wi-Fi connectivity, About Programmable Thermostats the problem.Like other Wi-Fi thermostats, they connect to the Internet through a Wi-Fi network.They allow users to adjust heating settings from other connected devices such as laptops or smartphones.This allows users to control the thermostat remotely.This ease of use is critical to ensuring energy savings:Research shows that homes with programmable thermostats actually consume more energy than homes with simple thermostats because residents either program them incorrectly or disable them entirely.The smart thermostat also records the inside/outside temperature, how long the HVAC system has been running, and can notify the user when the system's air filter needs to be replaced.This information is usually displayed later on connected devices such as smartphones.

Manual vs. programmable vs. smart thermostats 

Manual thermostats

Manual thermostats (also known as analog thermostats) are the oldest and simplest type of thermostats.These thermostats are set to one temperature and do not change until the user manually adjusts the temperature.

Programmable thermostats

First introduced more than 100 years ago, the programmable thermostat is a thermostat that allows users to set schedules for different temperatures at different times.Most programmable thermostats also have a snooze feature that pauses the schedule and effectively turns the thermostat into a manual one.The idea of the scheduling feature is that when no one is in the house, the user will set a warm or cool temperature to save energy and money.Because of this supposed energy saving, some building codes and government programs are beginning to require the use of programmable thermostats.Unfortunately, many programmable thermostats use more energy than basic manual thermostats due to human error when using these devices.

Issues with programmable thermostats

One of the main goals of a smart thermostat is to reduce the problems involved with using traditional programmable thermostats.In order to understand how a smart thermostat can take on this task, it's important to understand what's wrong with programmable thermostats and how they affect energy consumption.In 2008-2009, Florida Power & Light (FPL) provided 400 homeowners with programmable thermostats and monitored their heating and cooling patterns.Of the 400 participants, 56 percent used the programming feature, while the remainder did not program the thermostat but left it on hold.It was determined that users who used programming features actually used 12% more energy than non-programmers.This increase in consumption is due to higher nighttime duty cycles associated with lower thermostat set points (i.e. lower temperature settings) due to confusion with setting schedules.This study shows that programmable thermostats don't necessarily save energy.Smart thermostats try to solve this problem by taking the user out and relying on sensors and computers to save energy.

Another study conducted on the issue determined that the biggest problem for programmable thermostats was the human using it. The technology inside a programmable thermostat is no doubt one of the most important factors in determining whether or not the thermostat will be successful in saving energy.But an equally important factor is the human who is using the thermostat.Unfortunately, many people who own programmable thermostats do not know how to use the thermostat or are not using all of the features that are offered.One study conducted a number of interviews, surveys, and observations to determine that the vast majority of programmable thermostat owners are not using the thermostats for their intended purpose.An online survey showed that 89% of respondents do not use the schedule feature on their programmable thermostat.Other results from the interviews and surveys show that a large number of people have misconceptions about heating/cooling and the use of programmable thermostats.One misconception is people believing that heating all of the time is more efficient than scheduling the heat to turn off.Another misconception noted in the study is that turning down the thermostat does not substantially reduce energy consumption.These misconceptions reaffirm the idea that the programmable thermostat itself could have all of the necessary tools, but if the user does not use them or uses them incorrectly, then these thermostats will fail at saving energy.

Because of these studies and others like them,Energy Star suspended the labeling of programmable thermostats in December 2009. The goal of smart thermostats is to address these issues by taking humans out of the equation and creating thermostats that use intelligent computing to actually reduce energy usage and costs.

Smart thermostats

Smart thermostats are similar to programmable thermostats in the sense that they have a scheduling feature that allows users to set different temperatures for different times of the day.In addition to this feature, smart thermostats implement other technologies to reduce the amount of human error involved with using programmable thermostats.Smart thermostats incorporate the use of sensors that determine whether or not the home is occupied and can suspend heating or cooling until the occupant returns.Additionally, smart thermostats utilize Wi-Fi connectivity to give the user access to the thermostat at all times.These additional technologies have proven to make smart thermostats successful in saving users energy and money.