Parks Associates' eleventh annual Smart Energy Summit, held February 17-19 in Austin, Texas, will address the challenge and opportunity for utilities as consumer adoption of connected products and participation in renewable power generation increase. Ahead of the conference, we asked one of our speakers, Justin Berghoff, Director of Business Development and Product Management for Leviton, to share some of his insights with us. Mr. Berghoff will be a panelist during the Energy Data and the Smart Home: Enhancing the Customer Relationship session. He will be joined by:

Rand Bailin, Partner, Sprosty Network
Troy Morgan, CEO & Founder, PanTech Design
Daniel Roesler, Co-founder & CTO, UtilityAPI
Katie Shrewsberry, Founder, EcoCred, Exelon

How are you optimizing smart home bundling?
The My Leviton platform provides a connected solution that includes the revolutionary smart load center, Wi-Fi lighting and fan speed controls, smart plugs, and more. We continue to build out this portfolio and have recently launched a new Voice Dimmer with Amazon Alexa Built-in. Just as Leviton helped electrify homes well over 100 years ago, these market-first technologies integrate seamlessly into any of today’s smart homes.

Using our expertise in personal protection, Leviton introduced the industry’s first residential load center with smart technology. Homeowners can monitor energy consumption, calculate energy bills, or trip a breaker remotely from anywhere in the world using the My Leviton app. This singular app experience manages your load center, but also integrates more common Decora Smart lighting controls – giving users the freedom of controlling their lighting from a smart phone or tablet anytime, from anywhere. Builders and Contractors asked the electrical world for a way to differentiate their smart homes – and Leviton answered with an award-winning solution that’s easy to install and adds unique intelligence to their projects.

What are the barriers to adoption for solar, EV and storage companies?
What I see as the biggest barriers to adoption of solar, EV, and storage are economics and education. Let’s start with economics. Depending on where you live and what you pay for electricity, the ROI may not be enticing enough to make the initial investment required to transition to renewables. In other words, consumers are not feeling the pain. One of the major contributors here is the fact that the fossil fuel industry gets billions of dollars a year in subsidies and tax breaks to offset the consumer’s electricity bill. The renewables industry is trying to break down this barrier by offering financing packages so the consumer can pay in installments.

From an education perspective, there are fears that solar, EV, and storage are unreliable, unnecessary, and will not work for them. Until awareness is more widespread, policy, like the California PV requirements and NY REV, will be the driving force to adoption.

To learn more about the Leviton Load Center, visit Leviton.com/loadcenter.