What went wrong?

1. The appliance manufacturers apparently were not convinced - or they see this only as an opportunity to sell add on services. During the "Great Recession" few people will be an appliance on the high end.

2. Appliance manufacturers had their heads in the marketing sand! I had looked for smart enabled appliances two years ago... the best I saw was a Miehle(sp?) net ready dishwasher. However the only function that it could perform on the net was a call to service if there was work needed or firmware updates required. No Demand Response features, No web browsing to it for status. And they wanted $250/year for the added service value.

3. During the "Great Recession" big incentives went out to replace old appliances - the incentives didn't require that they have smart features. Appliances last about 10 years. So next major opportunity is probably 2020!

4. HAN from the meter doesn't make sense. Period! Adding that gateway into meter and requiring customer to buy a device to connect to it is crazy. We could have implemented much of the DR desired features WITHOUT the smart meter by simply getting the utilities to add an API that allowed HEMS builders to pickup the time of use data from the utility via internet. YES, that leaves off the small rural markets. But priority should have been to go after the huge markets first with easy implemetations.

5. Many of the HEMS makers seem to be trying to lock customers into their proprietary controller and proprietary appliance, lighting modules. That excludes many of the existing home automation systems that were early adopters of technology. Those early adopters are the base that you need to sell future customers. Bad decision on new HEMS companies.

6, And then there is the security and privacy issues for many of the new HEMS products... not enough time and space to write about those.