Smart homes: Coming soon — a dashboard for your home

.

I am not sure why so many firms are focused on residential energy management. Parks Associates, the Dallas-based research firm, counts more than 150 companies in the smart home space, with even more on the sidelines poised to enter. Meanwhile, the low-hanging fruit of commercial/industrial/office buildings remains largely unplucked.

Some of those 150 firms have nothing more than ho-hum smart thermostats or single-purpose home energy monitors. But a few of them have a much more exciting concept - a full-featured dashboard that manages all aspects of your home, including energy management. Salt Lake City-based Control4 has one of the most compelling smart home visions, as I revealed 18 months ago when I explained why Control4 is the company to beat in home energy management.

Small steps towards a big vision

Now Control4 is taking steps to deliver that vision. Small steps, to be sure, but enough to pull ahead of the competition in the race to get units into the field.

The first step was the announcement in January 2011 of an important home energy management alliance with Silver Spring Networks, which will include a small role in AEP's stimulus-funded demonstration project.

Next came the news that 20,000 Control4 EMS-100 units will be placed in homes as part of Nevada Energy's stimulus project.

And third was the news that Oklahoma Gas & Electric will expand its current pilot this summer, and place Control4 units in homes.

Only partial functionality to start

These announcements would be even better news if the utilities were tapping into the full power of the Control4 system - if customers could easily use them to manage lights, and A/V, and home security, and electric vehicle charging, and so on. Instead, the utilities are piloting just a few functions. Consumers will be able to control the thermostat, read messages from the utility, and participate in demand response programs. When and if utilities choose, they can also provision those same devices with many other functions (and without the need to replace or upgrade the hardware).

Despite the limitations of these rollouts, they are a step in the right direction. They put highly capable, highly functional devices into homes. In the short-term, those smart home devices provide a consumer-friendly way to experiment with demand response. In the mid-term, additional functions can be added to move us where consumers really want to be - an iPad-quality, multi-function dashboard for whole home control.

Now Control4 is not the only company making progress. For example, Energate just released its next-gen home energy management solution at DistribuTech and Cisco is also getting traction with its highly capable units. Who do you think will win the race? Use the Talk Back comment form to share your insights, or jump to our discussion forum where home energy management has been a hot topic.

Read more on …

Smart home trends

Home area network technologies

Home energy management feeding frenzy continues