The connected home: Smart automation enables home energy management

In recent years, we’ve all been hearing a lot about the connected home, the smart home and the Internet of Things (IoT). Some of our friends and family may have talked about their smart thermostat that they can adjust using their mobile phone, and we saw media stories in 2014 about the $3.2 billion acquisition of prominent smart thermostat vendor, Nest Labs. We’ve heard of the coffee pot turning on when our home senses that we’ve gotten out of bed. We live in a world where Internet connectivity and smart phone ownership is near ubiquitous. Underlying and complementing these factors is the IoT. The cloud, mobile computing and social technologies make the connected home possible. Another key component, however, is energy. Not only the energy to power the interconnected devices that comprise the smart home, but more importantly, the energy that can be measured, controlled and managed. Home energy management is a service, a set of products and a market that is thriving due to all these factors.