Nest is the name of the company that could have made the coolest SMART Thermostat yet.
10% of all U.S. energy is controlled by thermostats; as much as the refrigerator, lighting, TVs, computers and stereos combined. That’s the equivalent of 1.7 billion barrels of oil per year. But in most homes the thermostat is an unassuming beige box. It doesn’t matter if it’s a manual or complicated programmable thermostat, we do with it what we’ve always done: get up, walk over to it, and change the temperature. Every few hours. Every day. 1,500 times a year.
We still try to save energy, of course. We turn down the thermostat when we can, we don’t set it too high or low. But we’re human. We forget. Until we see our energy bills. But the problem is, virtually everyone with a programmable thermostat doesn’t set or use it properly. Nest Labs, a Palo Alto-based start-up, aims to solve this problem with a new thermostat that’s simple, sleek, intuitive, and smart.
Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive and founder of Nest Labs, said, “We’ve built the world’s first learning thermostat — a thermostat for the iPhone generation,” according to the New York Times. It’s called Nest, and it’s going to be sold for $250. Pre-orders are being taken now:
Nest learns by remembering temperature adjustments entered over time. It creates a custom schedule from adjustments or can be manually programmed for seven days with 20 set points per day. Nest shows a leaf when you’re saving energy and displays the time it will take to arrive at a certain temperature. Nest also has an auto-away mode and can be adjusted remotely through a laptop or mobile phone.
Everyone remembers their parents old bubble thermostat. Well the new kid on the block has put a new spin on a look we all recognize as a thermostat.
The next-generation thermostat is constructed with a brushed stainless steel ring, a built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery, and an LCD screen with a 320 px display. Nest is RoHS compliant and free of arsenic, mercury, and PVC.
COMPATIBILITY
Nest is compatible with forced air, radiant, heat pump, oil, gas, and electric systems; one or two stage conventional heating; one stage conventional cooling; one stage heat pumps with auxiliary heat or two stage heat pumps without auxiliary heat; 24-volt systems. Nest doesn’t support conventional two-stage cooling or heat pumps with two-stage heating and auxiliary heat.
