ISPs Join Pack of Companies Targeting Home Energy Management

AUSTIN, Texas -- Significant opportunities are said to await Internet service providers as smart grid deployment expands and consumers have the option to monitor and manage their home energy usage. While utilities wrestle with new models of interacting with consumers in a two-way environment, giving consumers control in what has been a decidedly one-way relationship, telcos and cable companies are hoping to grab a bit of the smart grid action.

At Parks Associates’ Smart Energy Summit, executives from Verizon, Cox Cable and CableLabs spoke of opportunities to engage the consumer in residential home management. “Why is a cable guy at an event like this?” asked Vince Groff, vice president of business development for Cox Cable, introducing himself on a panel on cloud-based energy management for consumers: “We're interested in the space.” Cox sees opportunity in home security first, Groff said, and the company is “actively trialing and plans to roll out a home security product” built around a panel and wireless sensors. A logical next step is energy management and other services. At this conference, “we'd love to explore partnership ideas,” Groff said, saying the company wants to exploit display capabilities of security panels and set-top boxes to inform consumers of their energy usage in a co-branding effort with utilities. Cox has spoken to various utilities, with mixed results, he said: “Some are open and some are less open.” Whether there’s a more active energy management role that Cox could play, Groff said the company hasn’t established a business model in the utility space. “I think we could be successful in demand response,” he said, saying talks in that area with utilities “haven’t been as successful."

ISPs already have an “in” to the consumer, Groff said. With a 60 percent footprint in the residential markets it serves, “we have trucks, lots of people running around with tool belts and large customer service organizations,” he said, “so I think we can partner and be a distributor of technology like this.” Starting out with “baby steps,” he said there may not be a huge opportunity in the short term, but “we're looking at something long term."

Also touting the cable industry’s potential in home energy management, Roy Perry, director of strategic assessment at cable industry consortium CableLabs, said there are 600 million set-top boxes already deployed in the market worldwide that run on the organization’s standards. He said the cost of a cable modem dropped from $500 to $20 over 15 years due to market competition, making it an affordable gateway option, and “until you put the consumer at the center, you're not going to create a self-sustainable market.” Perry compared the energy management scenario to e-mail and “putting services independent of where the user is.”

It’s still to be determined whether consumers want monitoring and control capability, and if they do, it has to be in real-time -- two seconds versus 15 -- “so they can correlate their usage with their behavior,” Perry said. Consumers also want to get pricing and grid status real-time from the Web, he said: “If you provide access to the meter and signals on the Web, then third parties can create energy management solutions in the cloud.” Major third-party apps could appear within a year or two and “completely disrupt the market” allowing consumers to get demand-response services and be able to optimize their energy usage, he said.

Verizon is looking at how it can leverage the Verizon brand, the broadband connection and offer services enabling consumers “to engage with energy and how they control and manage the house,” said Ann Schaub, director of connected home services. Schaub described a series of devices Verizon plans to offer including cameras, lighting controls, video monitoring, door and window sensors and locks, smart thermostats and appliance modules.

"We tied into much of the DNA of Verizon” to allow consumers to be alerted by text message or e-mail, she said. Consumers can manage the home via various devices. Verizon’s message is that a unified control panel and devices bring together home control “in a way that makes them cohesive,” she said, saying “from a single landing site consumers can manage all of them from a PC, a smartphone app or FiOS TV.” She described integrated modes where connected devices work together. By pressing a button for a sleep mode, for instance, users can turn on outside lights, turn off all indoor lights and set back the thermostat, she said.

The service, demoed at CES earlier this month, is expected to launch before the end of June, Schaub said, and the company is finalizing the platform and products. She said the recurring monthly fee will be in the “single digits,” regardless of how many devices a consumer wants to control. If the company adds more services down the road, such as in-home monitoring, “we are not going to charge incrementally as well,” she said. “A simple pricing plan with a good consumer experience is what we're after.”