TinyTim

Intel’s Home Energy Management Plan, Part II

I've been looking at home automation at CES for 30 years.
I doubt HEMS will be the driver.
As would be expected, Intel has had many miscues.
The main energy users in the home are- HVAC, hot water, (pool pump), refrigerator. They can all be automated with cheap timers, thermostats, etc. or made more efficient.

The remaining energy- lights, cooking is a smaller fraction and easily manually controlled.

Smart meters and the daily energy consumption feedback provided are useful and interesting. Until utilities require time-of-use rates, not much will happen and even then, the cheap simple controllers will handle most of the load and create most of the savings. There has to be an economic incentive like rate structure.

A similar thing happened a few years ago with residential demand controllers, a fairly expensive and complex piece of equipment. The market was entirely driven by the residential demand rate one local utility issued, and dried up when the rate went away.

An interesting aspect of smart meter feedback is that for people on tight budgets, the advantage is knowing exactly how much the bill is going to be well ahead of time, as opposed to saving energy. The point is that knowledge may not influence conservation actions, especially for a renter.