My hydronic system failed this summer. Spare parts for the boiler, still more efficient than most on the market, are no longer available. It supported a hot water heater and two zones in my house. I am splitting out the water heater, moving to a tankless system. While the best boilers haven’t gotten any better, the price for an equivalent efficiency boiler has gone way down; the incentive to put everything on one boiler is gone.
I would like to add one or more zones to the house. The upstairs of this old house, with bedrooms and bathrooms, has never been conditioned. With the kids away, half of the bedrooms are only rarely occupied. I like keeping the rooms for a few more years, as long as kids show up for various holidays and vacations.
There are two frustrations with this process.
The first is the contractors. They arrive, already knowing which product they will install, based upon manufacturer incentives. The manufacturers seem to be responding to energy prices by offering dealers incentives on big systems, much as auto dealers are offering incentives on SUVs and Hummers. I tell them what I want over the phone, and warn them what the criteria will be; even so, they waste my time and their own. They decide the best fit based on incentives before they look at the space, they push the incentives, and they wonder why they leave without a contract. I cannot even imagine why they think I will accept fewer zones in twice as much space. Until the installers move beyond this attitude, home building system performance will remain abysmal. The worst part is that this must work, as these jokers stay in business.
The second issue is how little intelligence the control systems have. The home market appears to be dominated by systems that pretend to have taken the digital age into account. The thermostat is a nice flat screen. The time of day functions are easy to access. The actual control sequences are not as sophisticated as my last installation, which was constructed out of a complex nest of relays to squeeze extra energy out of each cycle. If this is what the American control companies are offering through their dealers, they deserve to lose to the Chinese.
The third issue is flexibility. I have been offered many controllers, but no flexibility in any of them. Single purpose systems are offered with different controllers than hybrid systems. Adding a third energy source is yet another decision. Each representative who comes by seems surprised when I ask for flexibility, and explain that it would be far too expensive. Based upon what their dealers, the home comfort system companies have not learned the essential lesson of the digital age, that simple product lines with large production runs are cheaper, and therefore multi-purpose re-programmable controllers will be cheaper. Every brand (and I have seen them all) is done a disservice by its local distribution.
So what do I think a standard, flexible controller would offer?
A home system should support hybrid systems, with enough abstraction so that multiple fuel sources are supported. A standard controller would balance the price and availability of each energy source installed to provide heating and cooling. It is common for systems to support an outside set-point to change from, for example, a heat pump to a gas pack. A proper system would tune itself, and be able to suggest what that outside set-point should be.
It should also be able to accept prices. For now, there is no live energy pricing in my area; I should be able to enter the price from my last electric bill, and the price from my last gas bill, and let it suggest another cutover point. If I add a thermal store, I should be able to include that in the same algorithm. It should not matter if the thermal store is driven by time of day prices and pre-heating (or cooling) or by a solar thermal unit. If I add photovoltaics, the system should be able to understand the availability and pricing of that as well. The system should be live pricing ready, ready to receive live price signals for any of the energy sources when they become available in my area. Clearly there should be a means to upgrade the system to support ADR (automated demand response signals) when they come to my area.
There is no reason for this to be more expensive. The controllers they are selling already have enough muscle power. The interface and system logic, while more extensive than today, would be less extensive than the multiple product lines I am being offered each evening.
Until the control vendors and home automation vendors offer products like this, than it is a sham they provide any sort of sustainability or energy control. If they are offering products like I want, than they should support hot lines to report the local dealers who besmirch their names with poor proposals. Like GM, sitting fat and happy on the no competitors assumption of generations ago, they will slow lose their customers and their companies.
And if you think the products are available, here in central Carolina, let me know. I will write that up later….