AC limitations in Italy - Operation Thermostat?

Who’s going to come to your apartment in the middle of the night and check your thermostat?

Who’s going to come to your apartment in the middle of the night and check your thermostat?

The owner of the property may have to limit the operation of the a/c. In many hotels, the entire a/c system is turned off unless the outside air temperature reaches a certain temperature. You can fiddle with the controls in your room all you want but they won't work.

The hotels yes. Often times you can’t lower the thermostat in your hotel room under 22 or 23 C, and once you remove the card key from the slot everything shuts off, so you can’t leave the AC on while you are not in the room. But it’s not imposed by law on apartments.

The legal limitations in theory apply also to private buildings. As a practical matter, your experience will depend on the type of apartment and the owner. If it's in a small building and the owner/operator is not a total cheapskate, you should have thermostat control. If it's a large building with a centralized HVAC, you may encounter limits.

If its an AirBnb then odds are the "thermostat" is a button on the airconditioner. I have a number of these, fairly new and old, and there isnt anyway to limit the range. But who knows, maybe the newest come set up that way, but never seen it.

A hotel on the otherhand might have digital controls and they can manipulate those anyway that they want,.

I can see how a limit of 27 would be a problem, but 23 =73 Fahrenheit, which should be liveable for anyone other than a man who insists on wearing a long sleeve shirt, coat and tie to church in the summer.

Not Italy (been a couple years since we have been there), but in other areas we did run into smart thermostats that were programmed with limits, even in apartments and private rentals. Some, AC (though they physically had it) was not an option or locked out (at least in April), in others, there was a lower limit set...though not 27C, more like 20 or 22C. With modern smart thermostats, even split units with remotes, it is not that difficult to set limits.

For that matter, owners have a cost incentive to set limits on AC, electricity and cooling is not cheap, and that utility bill comes off the top of any income.

Thanks, all. This was related to conserving energy in the EU (Operation Thermostat) and was a strict rule in all public places and affected some apartments. It sounds like this is no longer in affect, which is great! This must have been an old note in our Air B&B

'Operation Thermostat' is still in effect and began May 1 at 27C, but seems to be only offices and workplace: https://notizie.tiscali.it/economia/articoli/operazione-termostato-stretta-su-condizionatori-riscaldamento/

Certainly something to be prepared for, and I appreciate the heads up. To be clear, though, that article linked above is dated 2022.