Nest thermostats to help save power during eclipse
California has grown so dependent on solar power that state officials have called on residents to conserve electricity during this month’s eclipse.
Now Nest Labs, maker of a smart thermostat, has a way to make that a little easier.
Nest — a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet — is asking its customers nationwide to join what it calls the “solar eclipse rush hour,” an effort to save energy as the eclipse darkens skies across the United States.
As the Aug. 21 eclipse draws closer, each Nest thermostat will display on its screen a message asking people to sign up. Customers can select the “count me in” button to sign up.
Then, in the hours before the eclipse begins, the thermostat will automatically cool each participating home.
As the moon moves in front of the sun, the air conditioning will switch off, to ease the power demand on the grid. The house should remain comfortable until the light returns. Nest already has a similar, voluntary program for saving electricity during periods of high electricity demand,
such as heat waves.
“We’re doing our job if you don’t notice,” said Ben Bixby, general manager of energy and safety at Nest.
California, which has installed far more solar power plants and rooftop arrays than any other state, is expected to see the biggest impact.
Managers of the state’s power grid predict that the eclipse, which begins just after 9 a.m. on the West Coast, will cut the output from the state’s large solar facilities by nearly twothirds before the sunlight starts to strengthen again.
California has more than enough fossil-fuel burning power plants to make up the difference. But using them increases greenhouse gas emissions.
“It’d be an awful shame to go through all this work to clean up our economy, our power production, just to fall back on fossil fuels here,” Bixby said.
The same dynamic will play out in other states, as the eclipse moves from west to east.
North Carolina, for example, ranks second behind California in solar power generating capacity, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. And while the eclipse will hit California in the morning, when electricity demand is typically low, it will reach the East Coast in midafternoon, when demand is higher.
Nest does not have an estimate for how many customers will choose to participate. But in the last few days before the eclipse, the company will reach out to utility companies and tell them how much power Nest customers in their regions are expected to save.
“Nobody’s ever done this before,” Bixby said. “We don’t have much to go on.”