Engaging Consumers with Additional Features Key to Energy Management Participation at Home

AUSTIN, Tex. -- Finding ways to monetize residential energy management remains a key challenge facing utilities, technology and software companies, broadband providers and appliance makers, officials said, as consumers have pushed back on smart meter deployments from utilities in the home, where available, and shown a general unwillingness to translate concerns about energy usage to their wallets. A key thread for the residential energy world, said Stuart Sikes, president of Parks Associates at its Smart Energy Summit is, “We don’t know what consumer interest is."

Sikes identified a convergence of trends that could bring consumers and utilities together. Utilities are driven to employ energy management programs by a need to replace the aging utility grid infrastructure in the U.S., but that only has “possible benefits” to consumers, he said. The major takeaway from CES earlier this month, he said, was “the reality of connected everything” having arrived. “Consumers pay a premium for devices that provide increased access, convenience and control,” he said. The “crossroads of mentalities,” he said, “might be a benefit to utilities as well."

The road to residential home management is diverging, Sikes said, with utilities focusing on smart meter-based solutions on one end and another market forming independently of the smart meter but performing “many of the same objectives."

Since Parks’ first energy summit last year, Sikes noted that more large companies have entered the home monitoring and control space, including security company ADT and Motorola Mobility’s 4Home division, which recently announced it would deliver home monitoring and control services over Verizon’s LTE network. He also cited the marriage of home management companies iControl and uControl and the arrival of cable operators, including Comcast, to the market, all of which he called “important bellwethers that the big players are scrambling to do things here aggressively."

Coming this year, Sikes said, are more broadband and other service providers such as HVAC installers, and more retail offerings at Radio Shack, Lowe’s and Best Buy. Home area network-related deployment from utilities is “small but coming despite initial [consumer] backlash,” and is moving from trial to deployment, he said. Standards, too, will continue to evolve over the year, he said.

Parks forecasts that over the next five years, 17 million U.S. households will have some sort of energy management network, whether it’s a HAN utility-based version based on demand response or a network provided by a third-party. Bill Ablondi, director of home research at Parks, cited companies including AMX, Control4, Crestron, Leviton, Home Automation Inc., Lutron, Savant, and SmartLabs that have sold through the CEDIA channel. He said some of the independent energy management networks could be either do-it-yourself options or professionally installed by CEDIA-type dealers “with no utility involvement.” Lifestyle connected home features are expected to offer the value proposition to consumers, he said.

In Ablondi’s vision of the coming year, more companies will join the home energy management space, and there will be approval of tariffs that enable utilities to move from HAN trials to deployment to help grow the market. Cloud-based solutions will emerge as well, from a variety of providers including broadband ISPs and HVAC and security installers, “who are very interested” in offering the services to customers, he said. He also envisions a “sorting out” of communication control standards that are “bogged down” and starting to limit the market. “There’s movement to sort this all out,” he said.