Thanks for sending back your research, interesting stuff. Hopefully we can get others to post more information.

Well technician visited today (worked for a sub-contractor “GoodCents” http://www.goodcents.com/portal/page/portal/goodCents). Also spoke to his boss at GoodCents earlier in the day.

Learned a few interesting things which the boss agreed the people at TorontoHydro and even the Peaksaver call centre (who I think may also actually be GoodCents employees) don’t understand.

1. Peaksaver events can be at anytime. The boss told me that the event on Thurs July 21 (when I had my problem) in Toronto the event started at about 4pm and finished around 8pm. The Peaksaver call centre people (two different CSRs) both told me Peaksaver events always finish around 5pm.

Of course for me this may mean most of what I experienced was “normal” (see my original post and item 3 below)

2. The boss and the technician told me technology used by Peaksaver is the alpha numeric paging network (didn’t know which carrier Rogers, Bell Mobility or Telus). Each box (or themostat) is individually addressable (i.e. has a unique pager id). But I remember from my days as a Bell Mobility employee that pagers can easily be grouped – i.e. you can send the same message to multiple pagers with one page request.

The technician said that generally peaksaver boxes were grouped by neighbourhood and that a group of boxes would be turned on and off together (but see item 4). I guess that could make sense from a load balancing perspective.

3. I learned from both the boss and technician that many/most A/C compressors have timers in the compressors (this is independent of any clock or program in the termostat). This timer is to prevent you (or your thermostat!) from turning the compressor on and off multiple times in a short period (i.e. within 5-10 mins). Apparently this “short cycling” can damage the compressor.

So, the boss and technician told me that sometimes peaksaver can “interact” with the timer in the compressor such that the compressor remains off for longer than expected.

In my case the technician rewired the peaksaver box and my compressor in such a way as (hopefully) bypass the timer . He wasn’t 100% sure because the wiring in every compressor is different…so there is some educated guessing involved.

4. I got different stories from the boss and technician on the behaviour of the LED indicator light on the peaksaver box itself!

The boss told me that the LED goes red at the start of a peaksaver event, and goes green at the end (i.e. some hours later). This would suggest that the peaksaver box then acts autonomously during the event itself – i.e. its times 15-20 mins on…15/20 mins off… until it gets another page to signal the end of the event.

On the other hand the technician told me that the LED goes red only when the peaksaver box is actually preventing your compressor from running (assuming your thermostat is calling for cooling). This jives with my own observations. But it might also mean that the Peaksaver control centre is having to send a paging message each time to turn on and off groups of boxes. Given that this process of signalling the boxes to turn on/off over the pager network has some variability in timing, I would have thought this could have an negative impact on aggregated demand across the grid (which is the point of peaksaver!).

So I can imagine reasons why both stories might not be true!

Perhaps its some combination (i.e. me, the boss and the technician all managed to misunderstand each other!) – i.e. the instructions to start to cycle is sent once (as per the boss), but the LED doesn’t change when this message is received; then as box then acts autonomously cycling the compressor every 15-20 mins during which it turns the LED red (as per the technician).

5. I was told by the boss there is no where on-line for anyone (including the CSR’s at the PeakSaver call centre!) to find out if an event has been called, when it starts, when it is due to end and actually ends. Also there is no way to find out if your box/thermostat has been “instructed” to cycle on/off.

Both the boss and technician thought this would be a good idea(!) and promised to bring this to managements attention! Indeed the boss was a little exasperated when I told me of what the CSRs told me – since he said he does provide the info on the details of the timing of the events when he gets that info (he didn’t say from whom – but I think its the Ontario Power Authority-OPS or the Independent System Electricity Operation-ISEO)

Ok that’s all for now…

Can anyone add / clarify?

Thanks for writing. You raise several good questions in your comment. I will try to answer some of them, hopefully someone from peaksaver can also respond.

The system that Hydro Ottawa uses is different then the Toronto Hydro. With the Hydro Ottawa system you get a special thermostat that allows Ottawa (and the owner) to control the thermostat remotely. I believe this is done by using the old pager network to send commands to it. It is a one-way communication, in other words you can’t see what the thermostat is set to remotely. It is possible that the box attached to your AC works in a similar way. I know for the thermostat each one is individually addressable.

With the Hydro Ottawa system you know if your thermostat is being cycled on and off at 15 minute intervals by a indication on the screen “ramping”. In my several years of using the peaksaver I have yet to see this indication. I wonder if they only have to send the box a single command and a built in mechanism takes care of the 15 minute cycles until told to stop. By staggering the start command they could get roughly 50% of the units being controlled to be off. I’m just guessing on this.

I agree with you, it would be nice if you could check if a “peaksaver event” had been declared. Something like this would be useful on the utilities website.

Thanks for sharing your experience… not much out there… and there are meant to be 50,000 of us with peaksaver at home!

Anyhow, just experienced an odd problem with peaksaver during the hot weather (described below)… but it led me to ask:

Can I find out whether a “peaksaver event” has been declared?

I’ve looked all over the web OPA, ISEO, Toronto Hydro etc. and can’t find it. Even the folks on the Toronto Hydro Peaksaver desk don’t seem to have ready access to this info? Anyone found it?

Of course it would be even cooler if I could find out if my peaksaver box next to my compressor was currently on or off or currently being asked to cycle my compressor without going outside and looking at the led!!

==Odd Problem Description
I have the peaksaver box next to the A/C compressor outside which power cycles the compressor, not the thermostat.

There was a Peaksaver event called in Toronto at least on Thursday (unsurprising) but my compressor only returned to normal operation at about 9pm!

Between 5pm and 9pm (when there was a demand for A/C from my thermostat) the compressor only ran for 5-10 mins per hour, not the normal 15-20 mins on / 15-20 mins off. While the A/C compressor was NOT running the LED on peaksaver box mounted near the compressor was red – indicating that the compressor had been power cycled down by Toronto Hydro. After 9pm everything returned to normal – the LED on the peaksaver box was green again.

I called the Toronto Hydro peaksaver # 1 877 487 8579 and was told there should have been no cycling after 5pm, but that they had (a few) other calls describing similar problems and sometimes it takes 30 mins after the end of an event for all peaksaver boxes to stop the power cycling of the compressor.

They’re going to send a technician to check the health of my box – but wondering if anyone else experienced this?

==How does Peaksaver work?
Finally, just wondering if anyone understands the technology at work. If it takes 30 mins for all boxes to stop power cycling this suggests each of the ~50,000 boxes are individually addressable – i.e. it takes 30 mins to send 50,000 commands to each individual box to return to normal behaviour. But can think of a bunch of reasons why this wouldn’t be a good design choice.

Anyone know how it works? How do they tell a specific box (or thermostat) to powercycle the compressor and how do they ensure that 50% of the boxes are off in any 15-20 min period (to maximize the reduction in demand)?

As for the thermostat itself my only gripe has been the lack of a cycle fan mode. My house is 1950s, the ducting is a mess, which leads to some fairly drastic temperature variations. Running the furnace fan seems to help mitigate this problem, but running it 24 hours a day seems like such a waste. I understand that the latest version of the Peaksaver thermostat has this feature. I actually tried getting the Peaksaver program to upgrade my unit. I was told this was not an option, but I could opt out of the program. I can understand not allowing upgrades, they don’t want to be spending resources every time they make a change to the thermostat.

So for now I am sticking with the program. However, I have had my eyes on the ecobee thermostat. Made by a company in Toronto, this thing does it all. Remote monitoring of temperature, fan cycle modes, touch screen interface, iPhone ap, one push quick save mode and a vacation mode. You can even get weather reports directly off the thermostat. It will email you if there are any issues with your system. The only thing stopping me is the hefty price tag.

Report back on how you like your new thermostat after a few weeks.

Jamas

ABOUT the BIG BROTHER comments this is technology like a pager system there is NO WAY that any CROWN organization offering such a Great program could have access to see the temp of your home it accepts a command DEMAND RESPONSE RAISE MAX 2 DEGREES nothing else. And if you really dont like it that much you can easily have it removed (AGAIN FREE OF CHARGE) by an experienced Gas and oil technician or Cert. electrician.

So please for people looking for insight be open to new things, we only have 1 world, please lets do what we can do.

Yes, you can access it from anywhere in the world
Yes I got 25 bucks back
Yes I have a very kind gentleman come to my home for free to install it
Yes the thermostat is worth 250
Yes it will save you money about 10-20% annually

NO THERE IS NO CATCH REMEMBER YOU ARE ALREADY A CLIENT OF THIS COMPANY

HAVE FUN! The stat is a fine upgrade for any home or business.

Thank you for your time.