BUILDING TEMPERATURE CONTROL APPLIANCE RECIEVING REAL TIME WEATHER FORECAST DATA AND METHOD
First Claim
1. A building temperature control appliance comprising, an ability to control one or more pieces of heating or cooling equipment, a means for receiving and transmitting forecast data from a weather forecast database.
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Abstract
The invention is a web enabled building temperature control appliance that receives data from the national weather service or from any other suitable source. This data consists of current temperature and pressure as well as forecasted temperature fluctuations. The building temperature control appliance would have a constant request/response process by using a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to gain access to the National Digital Forecast Database or other such weather forecast database. The building temperature control appliance would not turn on if the forecasted weather was within a zone of comfort chosen by the users. The zone of comfort is the band of temperature within which a person feels comfortable. This band of temperature is usually between 66 and 74 degrees Fahrenheit. Rather than having the heat turn on in the morning to heat the home to a set temperature the building temperature control appliance would allow the sun and the ambient outside air heat the home. In areas where the nights are cold and days are hot the building temperature control appliance would not heat the home in the morning when the forecast was for temperature hotter than the zone of comfort. There are many similar scenarios where the building temperature control appliance would act differently than a commonly known thermostat based upon information about the forecasted weather.
77 Citations
19 Claims
- 1. A building temperature control appliance comprising, an ability to control one or more pieces of heating or cooling equipment, a means for receiving and transmitting forecast data from a weather forecast database.
- 7. A method for conserving residential energy comprising the following steps, a building temperature control appliance with a means for receiving and sending information, requests weather forecast information from an online weather database, receives weather forecast data from the online weather database, compares weather forecast data against a user input and then prevents a heater or air conditioner from operating if a desired user input temperature will be reached through heat transfer.
- 17. A method for conserving residential energy comprising the following steps, a building temperature control appliance receives inputs of new interior temperature factors to increase or decrease the upper temperature or lower temperature set by the user inputs, proportional to the amount of heating and cooling that will take place from outside the residence, interior temperature factors are received from a personal computer by a means for sending digital data, the personal computer sends Simple object access protocol requests to a weather forecast database and receives forecast data, a computation device uses a cloud coverage amount, an hourly temperature, a wind speed, and a humidity to compute a heat transfer rate to a home, the heat transfer rate is then used to compute a factor that is applied to a user input upper temperature and a user input lower temperature, and these new factored upper temperatures and factored lower temperatures are sent to the building temperature control appliance and the building temperature control appliance will not operate a heater when natural heating will occur or operate an air conditioner when natural cooling will occur.
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19. The method of 17 wherein, the temperature control appliance can be installed or retrofit on a commonly known thermostat to save cost.
Specification