Microsoft Turns Sacramento onto Its 'Hohm' Energy Management Platform

By Jeff St. John

Microsoft (MSFT) turned on the data feeds to its Hohm home energy monitoring platform at a third utility on Thursday – the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

SMUD has 1.4 million customers, and all will now be able to see their monthly power bills through the Hohm web-based platform, Microsoft planned to announce Thursday morning at the utility's Sacramento, Calif. headquarters.

Microsoft has already enabled similar functionality at two other utilities – Xcel Energy, with 3.4 million customers, and Seattle City Light, with about one million customers.

The monthly data – which doesn't require a smart meter to be delivered to customers – can be linked with information customers can input themselves about their household energy use. Hohm merges it all to give homeowners tips to help save energy.

It's a model a bit more like energy efficiency tip websites, though Microsoft would like to see more frequent smart meter data incorporated into the system as it becomes available.

That's the route most other home energy management platforms are taking.

That includes Google (GOOG), which has signed up about 10 utilities, smart meter maker Itron, and home energy gear makers The Energy Detective and AlertMe to provide data to its web-based PowerMeter platform.

Google and Microsoft have other differences in how they approach the home energy management market.

Of course, there are also dozens of startups such as Tendril, Control4, OpenPeak, EnergyHub, Onzo, and many others attacking the home energy management space. Two notable ones, Greenbox and Lixar, have been acquired by richly funded smart grid startups Silver Spring Networks and GridPoint, respectively, and meter data management software maker eMeter has launched its own platform as well.