Many attempts to use dashboards to show energy consumption data and get consumers to conserve energy use have failed miserably. Will a startup’s idea of using a digital photo frame to broadcast the data make a difference?
Want to know what your power company thinks about the internet of things? If you live in Austin, you’ll know exactly what it thinks, but for everyone else my podcast with Austin Energy may still provide some valuable insights.
Here are photos and a review of one of Best Buy’s new Home Energy sections at its stores, which will sell gear to help home owners reduce energy consumption. While the section is waaay at the back, it’s designed to educate shoppers and promote interactivity.
With the world population booming and energy consumption growing, the challenge is on to counter the impacts with smart solutions, said Microsoft’s Rob Bernard. He said cloud-based software, creative uses of data and innovative interfaces will help create smart systems that can address the growing problems.
HP Labs has unveiled the company’s first foray into the crowded world of home energy management technology. The tech taps into the cloud, and uses a fresh way to display complicated energy-saving facts, but what will HP ultimately do with its experiment?
EcoDog is trying to sneak its high-end energy management system into homes as part of a broader rooftop solar power system. Will the high-end buyers of rooftop solar help break open the market for energy-smart home devices?
General Electric has launched a new business around energy-smart household appliances and products. But utilities are its first target customers, not consumers.
Electronics giant Belkin and stealthy startup PowerMap are taking separate cracks at a holy grail of sorts for home energy management: a device that can read every power load in the house from a single outlet.
Networking giant Cisco has teamed up with building efficiency startup Pulse Energy to track and manage energy use in city buildings in Vancouver. The partnership is one of the first times that Cisco has brought in a startup to work with its EnergyWise building controls platform.
Verizon has integrated Clearleap’s content management technology into its architecture to deliver cloud-based video with its video-on-demand architecture. Clearleap’s technology is being used to streamline production for FiOS 1 VOD content to provide hyper-local content such as news, sports, traffic and weather to its subscribers.
Two of the biggest players in both the computing and automotive industries have teamed up to tackle smart charging for electric vehicles. On Wed., March 31, 2010, Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced at the New York International Auto Show that they will work to together to use Microsoft’s home energy management tool Hohm to manage battery charging in Ford’s upcoming electric vehicles. Starting with the Ford Focus next year, drivers will be able to use Hohm to schedule and control the car’s battery charge based on factors like fluctuating energy pricing and a consumer’s convenience. We take a look at what impact this deal will have on Microsoft, Ford, and dozens of other competitors in the electric vehicle-charging ecosystem, from home energy software tools to utility back-end systems.
While smaller home energy management startups like Tendril have been pushing their APIs and platforms for months as a way to grow and gain partnerships, recent movements by Microsoft and Google to open up the development platforms around home energy data are important steps to creating a developer community around energy information and ultimately to deliver much-needed innovation. So, what do developers need to keep in mind when working with these new energy platforms and APIs?
Broadband service providers — both telcos and cable firms — could make a push into the home energy management market before the New Year’s ball ushers in 2010, according to indications from startups and predictions from analysts. Network operators are looking to bundle home energy management services, which will enable home owners to view their electricity consumption online and on broadband-connected dashboards, with voice, video and data, and offer it over their fiber and DSL networks. The idea is that the broadband firms could differentiate themselves and win over new customers (reducing that nasty thing called “churn”), while startups could tap into the market much more quickly than via other avenues like through utilities or directly to the consumer. That’s the idea, anyway. The reality is that telcos and cable companies have indicated interest in energy management for months (if not years) and it’s unclear how big of a push the broadband firms will actually make.