Why does the tado AC control not work as a room thermostat?

I live in the cold North.

For my heatpump (Panasonic), the tado AC control, when set to, say, 21 degrees, sees that the heat pump provides air with a temperature of 21 degrees. Means, the room stays at 16, 17, degrees when it is cold outside. Not exactly what I would expect from a room AC control.

For those at the tado engineering team reading this:

The temperature sent to the heatpump is not the same thing as the desired room temperature.

I drop not care for the temperature of the air that comes out of the heatpump, but I do care for the air temperature in the room.

A good AC controller first heats up the room as fast as possible (means: setting the heatpump air temperature to 30 degrees, which is the maximum in the case of the model that I have), and then choses automatically an air temperature which is slightly above the desired room temperature, e.g. 22 degrees, if the desired room temperature is 20 degrees.

This "on top" temperature difference should be automatically adaptive to the rooms "cool down rate", which can easily be measured. This cool down rate depends on the difference between the room temperature, and the outdoor temperature (and the house wall insulation, of course).

The heatpump should stop (but not cool) when the temperature is above the desired room temperature, for instance if you use an extra wood oven you might have.

It should never switch between heating and cooling automatically, except when this is explicitly desired by the user. Normally I would recommend to have a "summer" and a "winter" mode. Cooling down in winter is absurd, at least in Europe.

Answers

  • Good point! They may suggest you to switch the behaviour from "remote control" to "thermostat" (losing the possibly additional features like the drier), but that won't behave in the way you described. They should definitely develop a smart heating algorithm, as well as that could be applied (in the contrary) to cooling too for hot environments.