There’s a shiny, wifi-enabled Google Nest thermostat mounted on the wall of the hallway in Irina Levin’s home in Tempe. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about Levin’s air conditioning system, except for the way her utility company, Salt River Project, sometimes uses it.
“They can take control of our thermostat,” Levin says. She laughs when she says it — the concept sounds a little spooky.
Six or seven times throughout the summer and fall on exceptionally hot days, Levin gets an email letting her know SRP is going to override her thermostat settings. First, the utility remotely turns the temperature down a little during the day to pre-cool Levin’s house. Then, in the late afternoon, when the weather gets really hot and the grid is under a lot of strain, SRP dials her thermostat up — about four degrees hotter than she would usually set it — so her AC stops blowing at full-blast…