Everyone likes to talk about smart homes, but it's going to take about three years to move them from pilot projects to mass markets.
That's the view of Adrian Tuck, CEO of home energy management startup Tendril Networks, which makes software and devices to give homeowners a view into their moment-to-moment energy usage. That can help consumers save 10 percent or more on their energy use, according to utility trials that have put such devices in people's homes.
But there's still a long way to go before the market for such devices and services moves beyond the test phase, Tuck said Wednesday at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference in Sausalito.
"There's at least a three-year cycle of ever-greater pilots and trials that need to be done before we'll see this in the mass market," he said.
Tuck is in a position to know. He leads one of the top startups in the home energy management space, with trial projects with about 30 utilities representing "about half the homes in North America," he said Wednesday.
Tendril also has a partnership with General Electric to integrate its energy management software with GE's upcoming line of smart appliances, and raised $30 million in a series C round in June (see GE, Tendril Team Up on Smart Home Technology).
Still, it's among a host of home energy management players – from startups like EnergyHub, Greenbox Technology, Onzo, AlertMe, eMeter and OpenPeak to giants like Microsoft, Google and Cisco – attacking the space.
Looming consolidation will likely narrow down that list of home energy management players in the coming year or two, Tuck said.
"Were falling into the classic trap, which is, there's a bubble," he said. "Every day I turn on the computer and see a new startup venture funded in the space. There will be huge consolidation over the last 24 months."
Beyond that, changes in the way utilities make money need to happen for them to invest more heavily in saving power, Tuck said. Outside of regions like California or the Northeast that have "decoupled" utility profits from power sales in one form or another, the "vast majority" of U.S. utilities still lack incentives to help customers cut down on their power use, he said (see Energy Efficiency: Good Idea, Not Enough Believers).
In the meantime, Tendril continues to work on nifty ways to get people to save energy. The latest, Tuck said, is a video game it's working on where the game character's powers will go up and down, depending on how much energy the home's occupants happen to be saving at the time.
In other words, "If you come home and find that your PlayStation is on, but your refrigerator is unplugged, you can blame me," he said.
