An obvious overstep on the part of the government. No way they should be able to control anything in your house without a warrent. What is the next step on this one?
Let the government control your house, and do it for the children.

Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.

"You realize there are times - very rarely, once every few years - when you would be subject to a rotating outage and everything would crash including your computer and traffic lights, and you don’t want to do that," said Arthur H. Rosenfeld, a member of the energy commission.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/us/11control.html?_r=2