Colorado Professor Learns Who Really Controls Her Smart Thermostat During a Heat Wave

Kyri Baker reportedly typed 75 degrees into her thermostat app and got a flat refusal instead.

Xcel Energy had reached into her Boulder home through the very device she trusted to keep her family comfortable.

What her smart thermostat told her next reveals exactly how much control you've already signed away.

Assistant Professor Gets a Message Instead of Cool Air

Baker, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, wasn't asking for much.

Temperatures outside had hit 100 degrees.

She just wanted four degrees off the dial, down to 75, so her daughter could get some sleep.

Instead of adjusting, her screen locked her out with a message that read like a warning from the government, not a utility bill: "To conserve energy in your community due to stress on the regional energy grid, you cannot set your temperature to be lower."

Baker had enrolled in Xcel's Colorado AC Rewards program for the discount.

She got the discount.

She also got a stranger deciding how hot her own house was allowed to get.

"I just wanted to set it to 75, something very reasonable so my daughter could fall asleep," Baker said.

She called being blocked "kind of annoying," and said it felt like she was being "penalized" for trying to help the grid in the first place.

Xcel Has Done This to Thousands Before

This is not Xcel's first rodeo locking Coloradans out of their own homes.

Back in August 2022, more than 22,000 AC Rewards customers woke up to find Xcel had already made the call for them during a Labor Day weekend scorcher.

Temperatures were pushing past 90 degrees.

Xcel locked those thermostats at 78 to 79 degrees and gave customers no advance warning.

The company blamed an unexpected breakdown at its Comanche 3 coal plant in Pueblo, saying the plant "went down quickly" and there wasn't time to notify anyone first.

Customer Tony Talarico found his own thermostat locked at 78 to 79 degrees that weekend – with no way to override it.

One resident summed up what a lot of Coloradans were feeling: "it just doesn't sit right with us to not be able to control our own thermostat in our house."

Xcel's own vice president of customer solutions and innovation, Emmett Romine, didn't deny it.

He called it "a bit uncomfortable" but defended locking people out anyway, saying "it's very, very helpful" to the grid.

Helpful to the grid. Uncomfortable for your kid trying to sleep at 79 degrees in August.

The Fine Print Nobody Reads Before Installing a Nest

Xcel and utilities like it market these programs as voluntary, and technically they are.

You sign up, you get a $100 credit or a bonus payout, and in exchange you hand the utility a key to your thermostat.

Under normal conditions, Xcel says customers can override an adjustment.

But once the company declares a "system emergency," as it did in 2022 and again with Baker this year, the override disappears and the company's setting wins.

Similar demand-response fights are already playing out in Arizona and Ohio, where utilities and lawmakers are pushing to formalize these remote-control arrangements through legislation like Ohio's House Bill 427.

The pitch is always the same: a modest discount today for access to your home's climate control whenever the grid gets tight.

Nobody advertises the part where a coal plant breakdown or a heat wave means the company overrides you and there's nothing you can do about it.

Your House, Their Thermostat

This is what "smart" home technology actually buys you – a device in your living room that answers to a utility company before it answers to you.

Every one of these devices is a door somebody else can walk through, and Colorado has now proven twice in four years that Xcel will walk through it exactly when it suits them, not you.

If you like deciding how hot your own house gets, the smartest move is skipping the smart thermostat altogether.

Sources:

• Kyri Baker interview cited in "Colorado Woman Finds Out the Hard Way Why You Never Want a 'Smart' Thermostat in Your House," RedState, August 13, 2026.
• Sam Brasch, "A Heat Wave Wasn't the Only Reason Xcel Energy Locked Customers Out of Their Thermostats – Their Largest Coal Plant Broke Down," Colorado Public Radio, September 12, 2022.
• Jack McEvoy, "Colorado Utility Took Control of Thousands of People's Home Thermostats," The Daily Caller, September 1, 2022.
• Shane O'Neill, "Utility Companies Want to Take Control of Your Home's Smart Thermostat," SlashGear, July 10, 2026.