Ceding control

Big Brother is alive and well

Hydro One customers recently received an advertisement for a programmable thermostat. The offer is made attractive by price, the green symbols all over the paper, and the offer of bonus air miles.

The text of the ad stresses how the customer can take control of the temperature in their home, programming warm and cool, even making adjustments to their homes’ temperature online while away from home.

But what the advertisement neglects to mention is that if you buy one of these thermostats, you are forfeiting control of your thermostat into the hands of Hydro One, which can cut off your heating or cooling at points that it deems suitable—during peak uses of air conditioners in a heat wave for example. The control at that point is not in the hands of the consumer but in the hand of the provincially owned utility.

While this may or may not be a good idea, what is troubling is the lengths Hydro One has gone to deceive the consumer into thinking that this is a regular programmable thermostat— with the control being in the user’s hands. On the contrary, the point of this thermostat is to wire the user up to Hydro One and to give it control of your home’s electricity usage.

The only words to indicate that this thermostat gives Hydro One control over your usage would not be noticed unless you already knew this to be the case, namely the third (and one would assume the least important) point:

“An effortless way to make a big difference—peaksaver PLUS helps ease the strain on Ontario’s electricity grid on hot summer days when air conditioners are all running at once. During these ‘peaks’, your thermostat will slightly reduce your AC’s energy demand, but never on weekends or statutory holidays.”

The thermostat won’t do it, the utility will. And ‘your thermostat will slightly reduce your AC’s energy demand’ means ‘Hydro one will trigger your thermostat to shut off your AC following a signal from a centrally controlled decision making place’.

The best kind of Big Brother is the kind who doesn’t identify himself; the one who is buried in language the reader will not detect. This ad, unlike its predecessor a few months back, doesn’t even let you know that the key part of this ‘programmable’ thermostat is the part over which you don’t have control. So sign up today and keep Big Brother happy.