Thermostat replacement

[FtWorthAtheist]

So I recently looked at electric prices because my contract was up, and it seems they have gone through the roof in my area.  So I signed up for a time-of-day plan because I thought I would be able to reprogram my thermostat and rearrange my electric car charging to use less electric during the expensive times.  The new plan charges 6 cents/kwh during other times, but from 6-9am it is 16 cents/kwh and from 6-10p it is 32 cents/kwh.

What I have discovered is that my thermostat is foiling my efforts because it tries to be smart and get my temperature down to the set point before the next period starts.  So it displays the message "following recovery schedule" and starts cooling aggressively at about 7:50am to reach the 74 temp that I'd prefer it to start cooling to at 9am.  I don't want to try to guess what factors it's using to decide when to start pre-period cooling; I'd rather find a thermostat that I can have more fine control over.

I'd like to find a thermostat where I could do this:
4:30am-6am: cool to 72
6am-9am: cool to 81
9am-4:30pm: cool to 74
4:30pm to 6pm: cool to 72
6pm-10pm: cool to 81
10pm-4:30am: cool to 74

We anticipate making some lifestyle changes to do more of our shopping and errands from 8-9am and 8-9pm.

In addition to it's schedule recovery feature, my current thermostat only has 4 time periods.

So I'm looking for suggestions for a new thermostat solution.  So either a thermostat with more time periods and where it lacks the schedule recovery feature or I can turn that off, or some kind of smart home option which allows me to send commands to control the thermostat externally.  I'm not sure if there's any kind of battery solution I could use to charge during cheap hours and discharge during expensive hours?

[GilesMM]

What thermostat are you using? Can you disable the "anticipate" feature and other smart features?


Are you cooling to 72 to get the house ready for the 81F setting in hopes of keeping it cooler? Does that work indicating you have a well insulated house? How long before it reaches 81?  I have had Texas houses that would reach 81 in less than an hour regardless of the starting point.  It's not great for your house, contents and HVAC to be swinging +/- 10 degrees twice per day.  How much will you save doing this?

[FtWorthAtheist]

It's a 7 day programmable Honeywell but I don't see a model number on the back or in the screens.  I don't see a feature to disable that, and I've looked through all the settings I can find.  I am cooling to 72 because it's the lowest comfortable temp in order to try to keep the temp comfortable for longer during the high cost periods.  I have no idea how long it will take to get to 81; the thermostat keeps interrupting that process with the unwanted feature.  I don't know how much I will save, it's an experiment.  But the 20 cent/kwh electric plans look very unattractive, so...

[lthenderson]

I have a Nest thermostat that you could program it for as many temperatures changes a day that you want in manual schedule mode and can turn off the “anticipating” feature so it won’t start the temperature change until your programmed time.

[Dave1442397]

I also use a Google Nest thermostat, and you can add as many ranges as you want per day. I turned the anticipated setting off too, so it doesn't kick in until the set time.