The notion of a home area network is vague indeed. As with the term 'smart grid,' ask two people what it means and you’ll get different answers. In the home space, it’s about a connected, energy-efficient home. Most people mention smart appliances and wireless thermostats. Others think of utility web portals and energy feedback data via snail mail.

The definition remained cloudy throughout 2011, but the industry saw advancements in fits and starts. Despite the exit of some major players, savvy startups saw deals on a much larger scale than in any previous years.

Although the market is still not clearly defined, home area networking in the energy space made enough noise in 2011 to let investors, utilities, and even some consumers know that it is here to stay. Here are the biggest trends in home energy management in 2011.

 

Convergence 

There was a time in the distant past (that is, about three years ago) when home energy management startups had distinct offerings. Some were selling paper mailings with information about energy use, others had connected thermostats, while others still had powerful software platforms to drive efficiency and support demand response. Although analytics were the underlying foundation of all of these products, they were sold in very different casings.

Those days are waning. Now, utilities are thinking about scale and future-proofing their choices. No one knows what the iPhone of 2020 will be.

Opower, which has long been the champion of low-tech offerings via snail mail and web portals, partnered with Honeywell to marry the wireless thermostat with analytics.

On the other side, EnergyHub, which once called the dashboard central to its offerings, launched a platform that will be offered to television and cable providers, home security companies and utilities as a software-as-a-service that can ride on top of any wireless thermostat. The dashboard is still available, and EnergyHub sees the new service as complementary to, but not in competition with, its classic dashboard and software offerings.

Other companies, like Tendril, are offering up their products in any way clients want them. Tendril has already moved away from pilots that always include a hardware component to full deployments that might not put in a single thermostat for years.

Having the right solution for the market today, and tomorrow, isn’t just about having both hardware and software, but also about forging alliances. Trilliant established home energy device partners in the U.K. and in North America. Tendril is also partnering up with other vendors, such as ecobee. Integration is not just a trend in the home market, but also a larger trend in smart grid -- and one of Greentech Media’s top 5 smart grid trends of 2011.

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