Targeting consumers, home energy start-up EnergyHub offers a colorful interface and sleek hardware designs.
Candace Lombardi
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
EnergyHub's home base communicates with home energy management tools via ZigBee, but also uses Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet. The EnergyHub system syncs with EnergyHub's cloud service and offers predictions based on prior use and rates, as well as real-time data. Homeowners can choose their parameters at set-up, but also allow EnergyHub's home energy management system to self-regulate based on their actual consumption patterns as time goes on.
EnergyHub's wireless thermostat, shown here, is currently being used in pilot programs. The company plans to announce a partnership with a wireless thermostat manufacturer in the coming months, according to EnergyHub's Eric Fleming. It will use ZigBee, but can be set up to communicate with a wide variety of HVAC systems, receive commands from either the EnergyHub Home Base display, or the EnergyHub Web platform. It will also be able to be overridden directly as with any ordinary programmable thermostat. It then resumes its regular schedule at the next previously programmed time of temperature change.
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Like many home energy management developers, EnergyHub offers smart outlets for retrofitting a home so appliances can be both monitored and regulated remotely. The outlet communicates via ZigBee.
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EnergyHub's smart power strip places its six sockets in contrary directions so users can plug-in large plugs without having to worry about blocking the holes of other sockets on the strip. Smart power strips that plug directly into a regular outlet offer an alternative to smart outlets while also increasing the number of smart outlets available for remote monitoring and control of appliances.
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EnergyHub also offers load controllers that tie-in to major appliances like hot-water heaters or pool pumps. They can be set to give utilities or consumers the option to control or even shut off appliances connected to the device remotely. They give utilities managing an overload crisis the option of turning off specific large appliances across homes in a given area, instead of introducing complete brownouts.
