4 Steps to Residential Energy Management

From most news sources this week we hear progress, or lack thereof, of our government’s work on a comprehensive health plan. The most credible voices of opposition hammer on the notion that loss of choice and control will reduce the ability for consumers to reduce the costs of their care. Apply that same thinking to energy consumption. Today I have the choice, on a balmy Texas-in-July afternoon, to reduce my energy consumption by changing the thermostat. But aside from choosing to be uncomfortable, do I know how to improve my energy efficiency? As green technology proponents frequently remind us, if we don’t know what our home systems cost to run, we certainly are not equipped to fine tune them to more efficiently fit our lifestyles.

The four elements required to put the consumer in charge of his or her energy costs are:
1. Sufficient motivation for the consumer to make changes in current consumption behavior (this is implied).
2. An understanding of the energy used by each home system, measured in kilowatt hours and dollars.
3. The ability to program and control at least the major home systems, using common and easy to understand intelligent user interfaces.
4. A feedback loop which confirms which systems are responding to which programs and to what extent they are impacting consumption of kilowatts and dollars.

It is interesting to watch the development of these four elements. Parks Associates will, in the next thirty days, complete a survey of consumers which will quantify how strongly consumers desire the ability to impact their energy costs. Are they willing to purchase devices and technologies that will enable elements of control and monitoring? Are they (we) willing to replace costly home systems with ones that can be controlled and programmed? Are we willing to pay service companies, perhaps including our electric utility, our broadband and phone providers, or local tradesmen to install devices with a potential payback of a year or more? These answers are critical to the growth potential of a number of emerging industries.

The market is awash with the promise of new devices from companies as diverse as Black & Decker, Google, GE and Control4 – all with the technology to monitor or control some number of home systems. Network infrastructures inside the home are rapidly maturing. Unlikely partners ZigBee and HomePlug have joined forces to develop the Smart Energy market requirements – a roadmap of sorts to suggest how wireless and wired technologies may be used to develop an in-home control network. The table is being set and the silverware polished for arrival of the Big Guests – that is, energy utilities with their Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) or Smart Grids. Analysts Bill Ablondi and Farhan Abid report that nearly 9 million AMI meters are currently installed on U.S. homes, and that Obama’s Stimulus Bill fuels the rapid deployment of Smart Grids with $11 billion in federal funding.

The Big Guests are coming to the table and will be showcasing solutions, as currently in Colorado Springs and Austin, Texas, which provide consumers with frequent feedback on energy consumption. Here is how the party will unfold; as the Smart Grid is in place, we will see first a growing number of technologies that provide in home monitoring of our home’s usage. This will be followed by introduction of smart appliances – refrigerators and water heaters which, like existing programmable thermostats for HVAC systems, can be programmed. This development will create demand for simple unified interfaces – applications that bring the control of several appliances together under an orchestrated master plan. Finally, we will see our Internet, mobile phone and even TV service providers cautiously join the party – seeking to provide control applications as extensions of the mobile phone service, or as a widget on TV, with the assumption that simpler controls will garner a few extra dollars on the monthly bill.

Unlike the current health care policy quagmire, our stimulus dollars at work combined with private enterprise will empower consumers with a growing variety of technologies to tailor energy costs to meet particular lifestyle needs.

What's Hot? Residential Energy Management

During difficult times, the true optimists find the silver lining and recall that great opportunities are borne out of change. There are great opportunities in technologies for residential energy management now rising from the ashes of the global economic meltdown.

Parks Associates has been tracking home automation including energy management solutions since the late 80’s. Many solutions have come and gone, lacking sufficient support for mass adoption. If your average monthly energy bills are north of $300, then a little quick math suggests you could justify spending several hundred or a thousand dollars on home technologies which provide measurable savings by managing when certain systems in your home operate and hibernate.

Parks Associates tracks the companies playing leading roles in residential energy management. Many of these companies facilitate utility companies’ development of a nationwide smart grid, but many products work today with existing meters and can be purchased at retail. Some solutions involve a wireless monitoring device or thermostat and some, such as Google’s PowerMeter, are Internet applications which allow a homeowner to monitor energy usage from any Internet connected location.

It is uncertain if residential energy management technology will be driven into the home by utility companies or pulled in by economizing consumers, but it is likely to be both. What is certain is that several network protocols are well entrenched in near term solutions. These include IP (Internet protocol and specifically IP for Smart Objects), ZigBee, Z-Wave and Wi-Fi. While there is certainly time for other protocols to enter the race, the majority of early products incorporate these standards. Consumers have grown comfortable with Wi-Fi on their laptops, home routers and iPod Touch devices, but are not familiar with other technologies, e.g. ZigBee. ZigBee is a network protocol optimized for low power devices, strongly endorsed by many utilities. The combination of these technologies provides an array of relatively low cost products that enable us to track our current energy usage, and, in some solutions, control how and when we run certain systems.

Parks Associates is bullish on the prospects of consumers deploying products now which will begin the transformation of our attitudes and usage of energy. As Google states, the first step in changing consumption is measuring what and when we consume. We hope that energy utilities will jump start the process by providing incentives or even selling and installing products which will heighten our awareness of how much energy we use.

The global crisis of rising energy costs will first transform our attitudes and eventually modify our energy consumption habits – strengthening our economy with the help of technology.

Is the Market Ready for Energy Management?

It’s no secret that few homes in the U.S. or, for that matter, anywhere in the world have electronic control systems. I have postulated that there are a number of paths on which controls can ride into the home: basic lighting, entertainment, security and …energy control systems. This last one, energy controls, was highlighted at this year’s CES by several firms …perhaps most energetically by Control4.

The company hosted a CES panel discussion comprised of Southern California Electric, California Public Utilities Commission, the Zigbee Alliance and Onteriors, an installing dealer focused on whole-home automation systems for green homes, to address the role home automation plays in enabling a green lifestyle. The conclusion drawn by the panelists is that utilities are prepared to invest in smart meter reading systems that can provide consumers with information about their energy consumption. In addition, these systems can enable time-of-day billing so utilities can provide consumers incentives to use power when it’s more plentiful …and less costly.


Sounds great, but haven’t we heard this before? What’s new this time?

We have heard it before, but there is a growing number of utilities and companies, e.g. Itron, that manufacture a large percentage of all electricity, gas and water meters used in the world behind the effort. IF the utilities do, in fact, finance the replacement of existing meters with those that can provide consumers information about their energy consumption and allow them some control over it, then I think energy management will become a major conduit for control systems into homes. I believe this is still a BIG “if,” but this is a development worth monitoring.

Why is this worth monitoring? Well, if you’re manufacturing controls or systems that need to be controlled, e.g. audio components, home theater systems, HVAC systems or home appliances, then these developments could affect you. Control4 plans to piggyback on these initiatives with its low-end, ZigBee-based control systems that the company believes can become mass-market products available at retail and easy enough for the do-it-yourselfer to install. Once in place, these systems can control any ZigBee-enabled device or system from home theaters to washing machines.