Big Ass Fans pairs up with Nest to cool the connected home
The Kentucky-based fan company is collaborating with the popular thermostat to control your climate.
- 10 years product testing experience with the CNET Home team
You might know Big Ass Fans as an industrial fan manufacturer with a rather cheeky (and unfortunately unhyphenated) name. But the company is showing some serious smart-home ambitions this year after debuting the Haiku with SenseMe , a first-of-its-kind, app-enabled residential ceiling fan packed with smart tech.
Now the Lexington, Kentucky-based company is announcing that its smart fan will soon integrate with the Nest Learning Thermostat too, with promises of coordinated climate control from a single user interface.
Thanks to the "Works with Nest" integration, Haiku owners will be able to control the basic function of their Nest thermostats directly through the SenseMe app. This includes turning the heat up and down, and also the option of receiving in-app suggestions on how to better use the two smart devices in tandem to stay comfortable while saving energy.
Both Big Ass Fans and Google's Nest Labs are founding members of Thread Group, a non-profit alliance of tech companies ranging from Silicon Labs to Samsung, with an eye on standardizing the smart home and promoting its tangible benefits for consumers.
Big Ass Fans claims that homeowners can save an average of 5 percent on their energy costs for each degree they turn the thermostat up, citing the US Energy Information Administration's Residential Energy Consumption Survey from 2009. With a connected fan capable of learning your habits and automatically making you feel several degrees cooler during the warmer months, the potential to save significantly more than that certainly seems plausible.
Those savings probably seem somewhat trivial compared to the cost of the fan itself though. At an MSRP of $1,045, each Haiku with SenseMe comes at a significant premium. The Nest Learning Thermostat rings in at $250.
Big Ass Fans expects to begin shipping the Haiku with SenseMe next week. At launch, the SenseMe app will be available for the iPhone and iPad, with an Android version due out later this year.