I have noticed a trend among our friends, (not technical folks), who actually turns off their heating when they go out. It is as common as turning off their lights when they leave the room.
I guess Nest is heading towards this direction, but pre-warming a house very "first-world".
Not to keep harping on the subject (see my comments above), but pre-warming or pre-cooling houses is actually a really great solution to solving our energy problems with algorithms. It's not strictly a "first world" problem.
Imagine a neighborhood of 100 homes where you know all 100 people will return approximately at 6pm in the winter, and they all want 72 degrees. Taking into account the insulation of each home, if you could pre-heat the homes on a rolling schedule (say, heat 25 of them to 75 degrees at 3pm, accounting for 1 degree of heat dissipation per hour, heat another 25 to 74 degrees at 4pm, etc.), you will actually in aggregate save a lot of energy and cost because of inefficiencies in the way we deliver and generate energy during peak times.
That is an interest way of distributing loading of the peak heating requirements. Does Nest have a ability to interact with the other Nest in the neighborhood? Or is it all controlled from a central server?
Not (yet) with other Nests that I'm aware of, but they're making deals with the power companies. Users can get discounts on their bill for allowing the power company to bump energy use down a degree or two during peak times.
Owning a house with central heating / AC that can be controlled by a Nest Thermostat via your household wifi from your smartphone while driving home in your Mercedes is a pretty "first-world" thing.
Especially given that this works best for second homes like a weekend house in Tahoe where it might take a full day to warm up if you left the heat off all week.
I guess Nest is heading towards this direction, but pre-warming a house very "first-world".