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The Internet of things

One of the main reasons for a partnership like the one with Lowe's is access to a large customer base; the home improvement chain says it serves more than 15 million customers each week. AlertMe is gathering usage data that can eventually be aggregated and give companies insights into automated efficiency measures.

Current systems often require an unrealistic level of involvement by domestic retail customers, and like Constellation Energy's Virtuwatt, successful smart meter products in the U.S. have been tailored to larger-scale energy users with greater incentives to shed load at times of high power prices. In AlertMe's idea of the future of domestic smart meters, customers will simply turn on their devices and use them normally while data is passively uploaded and can be examined for innovative insights by firms.

"It is putting your house on cruise control," Turner said, pointing out how analogous the journey home data is taking to the one already traveled by Internet users, whose usage is aggregated and examined for business insights.

A number of the major firms at CES will be telling "a connected story," Turner said from her vantage point on the exhibition floor, saying that the transformation of connectivity to houses is much bigger and wider than smart grid.

"This is the next stage of the Internet," she said.

 

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