AUSTIN, TX — As a heat dome pushed afternoon temperatures to 108 degrees across central Texas Monday, the Nest thermostat that Devin Rourke installed in 2021 and has not thought about since quietly bumped his living room from 72 to 84, citing a demand-response agreement Rourke does not remember entering and could not, under any reasonable definition, be said to have read.
The adjustment, which arrived in the form of a small green leaf icon and a notification Rourke dismissed because he was driving, is part of a utility program that allows ERCOT-linked providers to reach into roughly 1.4 million Texas homes during grid stress events and gently turn them into saunas. Participating customers received a one-time $50 enrollment credit, the memory of which Rourke retained for approximately eleven minutes in 2021.
“The agreement is opt-in, and customers can override at any time,” said Marisol Penn, a spokesperson for one of the state’s larger retail electricity providers. “They just have to find the override, which is in the app, which is in the email we sent during the same week as the Equifax breach reminder.”
By 3 p.m., independent grid analysts at Beacon Strategy estimated that smart thermostats statewide had collectively shed roughly 1.6 gigawatts of demand, an amount equivalent to a mid-sized nuclear plant or, alternatively, the cooling load of every Texan currently asking their device why it smells like that.
Rourke, returning home at 5:40 p.m. to a house his dog had stationed itself in front of the refrigerator within, attempted to override the setting and was informed by the app that his override had been received and would take effect in approximately twenty-three minutes, a window the app described as “comfort restoration” and which the dog described, through body language, as a betrayal.
The phenomenon is not limited to Texas. In Phoenix, where utility-controlled thermostats have been standard in new construction since 2022, residents reported their devices entering an “Eco+” mode that locked the setpoint at 82 and displayed a small graphic of a sun wearing sunglasses. In Sacramento, a customer who tried to factory-reset his unit was informed that doing so would void a rebate he received four years ago and has since spent on a Traeger.
Energy researcher Anil Voss, who studies grid-edge devices at the policy desk of a Big Four firm, said the programs are working exactly as designed, which is part of the problem. “The grid needs flexibility, and households are the cheapest place to get it,” he said. “What we didn’t quite communicate is that ‘flexibility’ means your thermostat now has a second loyalty, and the second loyalty pays better.”
Asked whether he planned to disenroll, Rourke said he would look into it once the heat broke, a timeline the National Weather Service projected to fall somewhere between Thursday and the collapse of the Pacific jet stream. His thermostat, queried separately, declined to comment but adjusted itself up another degree.