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Originally Posted by Elspode
What the hell is a city-controlled thermostat, and why would you put up with such a thing?
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The thermostat, provided/installed/maintained-for-free by the city, is connected via some type of network to the power plant. They have the ability to shut my A/C off if the city (or area, I guess) as a whole is using too much power and the power plant is approaching overload capacity. Cutting a couple thousand people off for ten minutes at a time each is apparently enough to keep the system from overloading.
I put up with it because having a programmable thermostat means that we save at least $50-$75 a month on our electric bill, because we can program it to a much higher (or lower, in the winter) temperature during the day when we're not home, and program it to start cooling again an hour before we get home. I could have purchased and installed a programmable thermostat on my own, of course, but that would have cost around $250 all told.
And like I said, it hasn't ever been a nuisance. Before we signed up I talked to several other people who were already part of the program and they were all happy with it. It could always turn into a slippery slope like glatt said, but I could also always just pay to replace their special thermostat.