Home by home, Honeywell solution helps cities go green

Thermostat control is a home automation feature that can save individual homeowners energy and money. And it stands to reason that the more energy each household saves, the less demand on a community's electric grid—meaning there are fewer brownouts or blackouts.

Building on that idea, Honeywell is now partnering with cities and towns to help them manage their energy consumption communitywide, home by home. The Morris Township, N.J-based company is providing communities with thermostats they can give their residents to better control energy usage. It seems like a very innovative—and very green—solution.

Here's more from a recent article in the St. Paul, Minn.-based Pioneer Press newspaper:

Honeywell has announced a new Wi-Fi-controlled thermostat that is intended to be distributed by municipalities instead of purchased at retail by consumers in order to better manage energy consumption across a town or city.

South Sioux City, Neb., will be the first community to deploy the new thermostat to help its 13,000 residents manage electricity costs, which are said to have risen steadily there in the past three years.

In the future, other municipalities will recruit residents to reduce energy consumption when demand spikes, a strategy known as automated demand response, or ADR.

As part of this, the residents would receive the $150 Honeywell Total Connect Comfort with ADR thermostat for free so that utilities can link to the home devices and reduce that residence's energy as needed.

Such an approach can help avoid brownouts and blackouts on the hottest days of the year, when power-grid stability is threatened.

Honeywell's thermostat can be controlled with a Total Connect Comfort app, available in versions for Apple iOS and Google Android devices.