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(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) March 10, 2009 10 Comments

The Smart Home, Part I

Smart grid proponents like to talk about the "Home Area Network" – a communications network for thermostats, appliances and electronics that can display the energy they're using. But getting there will take a lot of time and money.

What Standards?

It's still in flux. ZigBee is the most popular with nearly all the pilot projects now underway in North America, said Simon Harrison, a consultant with U.K.-based Engage Consulting Limited, which tracks smart meter deployments around the world. (In Europe, M-Bus is taking the lead, he said.)

But WiFi could be another contender, since it already has a presence in so many homes. Its disadvantage is its larger power requirements, though GainSpan says it has developed a low-power WiFi module that could fix that problem (see An Old Favorite, WiFi, Preps to Disrupt Smart Meter Market).

Z-Wave, another potential in-home communication standard, hasn't picked up much traction so far (see Sigma Snaps Up Perennial Smart Grid Hopeful Zensys.)

Powerline networking, through the in-development HomePlug standard, is running a distant, but respectable second, since it may be needed for about 10 percent to 20 percent of situations where wireless presents problems, Harrison said. Those could include apartments where meters are more widely scattered and separated by walls and other physical barriers, he said. Powerline can transfer more data, but it also costs more. (Smart meter and building control networking company Echelon Corp. has its own technology for powerline communications).

All these standards, by the way, are for radio or powerline control inside the home to the meter. The meter will communicate to substations and utilities over a variety of protocols: RF mesh, cellular, broadband over powerline, fiber, etc.

Notable Hardware Companies

A lot of companies claim they aren't interested in hardware, but their products are really embodied in hardware anyway. The worry among hardware makers is that they could be subject to commodity competition and pricing.

The Boulder, Colo.-based Tendril Networks makes energy displays, wall outlets and thermostats that talk to one another using the ZigBee communication standard. The startup has deals with about 29 utilities and expects to announce a commercial rollout in 2009 that will involve about 5,000 to 10,000 new homes a month, along with about ten more field trials. Still, it recently had layoffs, and has announced it will license its software to third-party equipment developers.

EnergyHub makes software and touch screen control panels to track and display home energy usage. The New York-based startup says it plans to start selling directly to consumers as well as to utilities sometime in the middle of 2009.

The Petaluma, Calif.-based, privately funded Threshold is also making a suite of wireless home control systems, including some energy-monitoring and savings devices. The devices use OneNet, an open-source wireless standard, to communicate with each other, though they can also "talk" with WiFi, ZigBee, Z-Wave and a host of other communications. Expect to see products for sale over the Internet by year's end.

Energate makes smart thermostats that serve as home area network hubs, communicating via ZigBee or other standards with a variety of smart home devices. Its thermostats are in use in pilot projects with Hydro One and Louisville Gas and Electric, and it is partnering with smart meter communications networking company Tantalus.

Cooper Industries Ltd. bought Cannon Technologies Inc., which makes smart thermostats, a few years ago and now has deals with PG&E, Baltimore Gas and Electric and other utilities to supply power demand management and energy efficiency services.

Aztech Associates makes wireless in-home display devices and time-of-use clocks that tell homeowners how much power they're using and when it's most expensive. Its products are in use in pilot projects including Louisville Gas and Electric and Canada's Hydro-Quebec.

Radio Thermostat Corporation of America is making a thermostat that can communicate via WiFi (see Get Ready for the WiFi Thermostat). The company also makes in-home displays and wall socket devices that can be controlled for demand response.

Control4 builds home control systems that show power usage and allows lighting control via a television interface – a recent add-on to the company's home entertainment and security monitoring systems. It has a deal to supply control systems for GE Home Technologies systems, and it's also looking to partner with smart grid software developer Gridpoint to use homeowners existing broadband connections to link them to utilities in advance of smart meter rollouts.

Onzo, a United Kingdom-based maker of energy dashboards and devices, has a £7 million order for its products with utility Scottish and Southern Energy, which holds the rights to distribute them in the U.K. and Ireland. That's perhaps not surprising, considering that Onzo received a £1 million investment from the Scottish utility, along with £1 million from the utility's Sigma Capital Group, in exchange for a 49-percent stake in the company.

Comverge Inc. (NSDQ: COMV) fits into the home area network in a slightly different way. As a provider of demand response services, it allows utilities to cut power use in homes at peak demand times using one-way pager networks, and has installed in-home energy displays, smart thermostats and digital controls in projects with more than 500 utility customers. In a nod to the emerging dominance of smart meters and broadband connections as pathways to the home, Comverge has also launched software aimed at giving utilities a platform to monitor and control systems based on both modes of communication.

Join industry leaders to discuss the future of green building at Greentech Media's Green Building Summit in Menlo Park, Calif., June 11.

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Comments [10]

Robert Gohn 03/10/09 5:02 AM
Nice summary, but the state of “flux” in the standards is way overstated. ZigBee is the established standard set for wireless HAN. This goes well beyond just getting bits from point to point, but also includes the application layer commands and the entire security and authentication regime. HomePlug’s place for a PLC home solution is being cemented by it’s cooperation with the ZigBee Alliance (after being cajoled by the utilities) to adopt ZigBee’s Smart Energy upper layer work. The other “competing” technologies are nowhere near as complete.
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Steve Pluvia 03/10/09 5:44 AM
Very nice summary—great work!
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Peter Tarca 03/10/09 9:14 AM
Great overview. The one company that wasn?t mentioned in your post is Proliphix, Inc. We have built an energy management infrastructure based on IP that supports our intelligent single-piece Network Thermostats(NT). While our business is targeted at small commercial, municipal and institutional facilities, many of our 10?s of thousands of customers are homeowners who simply plug into their existing home broadband networks for remote energy management and control. We see our service allowing homeowners and businesses to use their existing broadband connections to link them to utilities in advance of smart meter rollouts. Today we have single entity enterprise deployments with visibility/control of 1000?s of kilowatts that the utilities could have DR control over.
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David Egan 03/12/09 7:46 AM
The comments about MBus in Europe are a little overstated I think, probably unintentionally. There are deployments using MBus and Wireless MBus in central Europe, especially Germany, Netherlands and Austria, but there are multiple incompatible MBus standards (some unidirectional, some bidirectional) involved here rather than a single homogeneous standard, and by all accounts all is not working as well as it might seem. ZigBee is making good headway in Europe, though it is more used in the “last mile” backhaul networks at the moment, mainly for gas meters, and not yet as much in the HAN as it is seen in the US (except for some pilots in the UK). A significant deployment of ZigBee meters (270,000) can be seen in Gothenburg, Sweden, and soon in several locations in Spain, with France and Italy looking at ZigBee for backhaul for gas meters also. ZigBee is possibly the only standard that could be used in both the HAN and last mile backhaul, and possibly lead to the need for only one RF communications chip in a smart meter. ZigBee has got the security, bandwidth and mesh networking capability to do both.
DaveE
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jim stack 03/14/09 6:16 AM
Good article. The smart meter and V2G Vehicle To Grid can all work together. Your car can change at nigfht off peak and sell on peak. Your air cond can flip off for 5 minuets now and then along with hundgreds of others to prevent a brown out or even black out as has happened in the past. For this you will also save money and the grid.
I’m all for a smater grid and smart appliances that are super efficent.
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Bob Dumont 03/23/09 10:54 AM
I have been using a so-called Smart Meter since October 2005. At the time my electric provider was testing peak/off-peak pricing so I took them up on the offer. They started a five-year process to convert all their customers by 2012 to the new meter. I have been able to keep 80% of my usage off-peak since inception. However I would benefit even more if I could both automate functions or see what is drawing power at various times of the day.

There are very few appliances on the market right now that support power management. It would be beneficial if vendors would join together and commit to a standard for new appliances. Government should also work towards pushing utilities towards AMI.
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Bob Dumont 03/23/09 11:30 AM
I have been using a so-called Smart Meter since October 2005. At the time my electric provider was testing peak/off-peak pricing so I took them up on the offer. They started a five-year process to convert all their customers by 2012 to the new meter. I have been able to keep 80% of my usage off-peak since inception. However I would benefit even more if I could both automate functions or see what is drawing power at various times of the day.

There are very few appliances on the market right now that support power management. It would be beneficial if vendors would join together and commit to a standard for new appliances. Government should also work towards pushing utilities towards AMI.
Reply

mark buccini 04/6/09 1:56 PM
This is an excellent article summarizing the key smart meter functions, players and enabling technologies. Nice mention that simply making the consumer energy-aware, a.k.a. in-home display has proven to save on the order of 10% of a house holds energy. Without a visible speedometer how can you tell how fast you are going. Also refreshing to see more visibility being cast on the concern of putting all of the technology smarts under glass and expecting it to survive in a real environmental stresses and keep up with the technology advances for better than decade. Top it off by adding yet another network, a low-power 2.4GHz radio at that under this same glass. It is an easy argument to make that the meter should remain a rock-solid counter ?. a connected counter OK ? but just a node ? put home intelligence in the home.
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