Will Comcast be the Next to Get Into Energy Management?

AT&T has offered up its wireless network to carry smart grid traffic with SmartSynch. Verizon also wants to get into home energy control. So do British Telecom and Bell Canada, according to sources.

And my gut tells me Comcast, the big cable provider might be next.

I came across this idea during a field trip to Oakland’s Lucid Design Group, which has come up with a console for monitoring electricity, gas and water. The company has created an elegant interface that lets consumers and/or users study their resource consumption, carbon dioxide output, utility expenses and other data. It’s an impressive piece of software. Universities such as Emory have already installed it in several buildings. Check it out on the link. Here’s an example.

Lucid’s panel doesn’t control power consumption—it is built for the “power awareness” market says co-founder  Michael Murray—but it can be linked into demand response and control systems. The company grew out of a project at Oberlin and has spread largely by word-of-mouth to several campuses.

So why the Comcast reference? There’s lot of data here. The data also builds dynamically. When you want to check electricity consumption, the numbers roll up before your eyes. It’s sort of like watching the weigh-in for The Biggest Loser. Very entertaining.

It looks really good on a large 42-inch TV. Cramming it onto a small console or onto a thermostat would lose something.

Thus, Comcast or some other cable provider could begin to offer a channel to subscribers that would show their energy consumption. No need to put a small LCD on the wall. Just turn to channel 996 or something like that to see how much water you are wasting. By linking it with a demand response program, Comcast could drive revenue and reduce customer churn. Granted, there would be some wiring shenanigans that would have to take place in the home, but that’s true for any smart grid/demand response deployment in the home.

Just a thought.