Parks Associates research recently cited in Intelligent Utility shows that 16% of all U.S. broadband households own one or more smart home devices. Many of these smart devices offer energy management capabilities, including demand response. Utilities are now weighing the benefits of incorporating smart devices into utility programs.

Tom Kerber, Director of Research for Home Controls & Energy, reports that utilities can use data from smart devices to advance the success of demand response (DR) events in three ways: leveraging data from smart devices, leveraging data from multiple connected devices, and leveraging data from smart meters.

Energy modeling, one application that uses data from smart devices, can improve the effectiveness of thermostat-based demand response programs. When a DR event occurs, customers will sometimes manually change the temperature. This leads to longer equipment runtimes. The override rate for traditional thermostat-based DR programs is 10%. Load-shifting solutions can improve this percentage by using a combination of physical and behavioral models to determine pre-cooling and event strategies.

DR programs can connect to many smart devices—smart thermostats, heaters, lighting, electric vehicles, energy storage systems, solar power inverters, and Internet of Things assets. Companies can conduct data analytics from the information on these devices on an individual house level and also for DR events.

Disaggregation uses smart device data and can help utilities to identify behavioral changes that cause the largest amount of energy reduction for a specific house.

Read the full article on IntelligentUtility.

The interaction between smart devices and energy management will be a key topic at the Smart Energy Summit on February 22-24, 2016 in Austin, TX. The seventh annual event, hosted by Parks Associates, will bring together key industry executives and examine the expanding market for the smart home and the role of energy solutions within the Internet of Things.

Key sessions this year include:

• Unlocking the Value of Energy Usage Data - Tuesday, February 23, with speakers from WattzOn, PlotWatt, Bidgely, UtilityAPI, and Green Button Alliance
• Integrating Smart Products and Consumer IoT into Utility Programs - Tuesday, February 23, with speakers from Nest, SMUD, Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP), WeMo/Belkin, and ERCOT
• Solar Industry: Integration, Competition, and Impact on IoT - Wednesday, February 24, with speakers from Vivint Solar, Austin Energy, Silver Spring Networks, SunPower Corporation, and Enphase
• Role of Energy Management in Smart Home Solutions - Wednesday, February 24, with speakers from Rheem, Comcast, Carrier, United Technologies, National Grid, and Vivint

For more information on Smart Energy Summit speakers and sessions, visit ses.2016.com.