Amena Ali, SVP and General Manager, WeatherBug Home, provides insight on several key industry trends for Parks Associates’ 20th-annual CONNECTIONS Conference, which will be held May 24-26 in San Francisco:
How is your company engaging consumers through new technology solutions?
Engagement is all about delivering to customers what matters in a way that is delightful and easy. More than 90% of data is not analyzed, so being able to find the signal in the noise amidst an exploding volume of sensor data is the first step towards delivering consumer value. Bringing extra comfort and savings also requires extending data analysis beyond the confines of the home. About 50% of a home’s energy usage is driven by the weather, yet today most efforts are confined to linking devices and systems inside the home.
Integrating data from weather sensors with connected home devices provides a consumer with real-time, customized insights on why a home may feel drafty or uncomfortable and what next month’s electricity bill might be. These insights can then be used to automate thermostat settings for optimal energy savings and comfort. The next step is how that insight is delivered, and for us, leveraging high engagement on our weather app and content is key to helping consumers make this important connection between weather and energy.
What is the biggest change you have seen in the past year in the connected home and entertainment industries?
We are seeing a strong uptake in connected thermostats and, more recently other connected home devices that help consumers reduce energy costs and improve comfort, while also enabling utilities to deliver more intelligent demand response and energy efficiency programs through the optimization and automated control of HVAC systems, appliances and more. This is leading to a very interesting dynamic in the market, as we now are seeing players in the home security and entertainment industries, also looking to the connected home/device market for ways to bring additional value to their own customers – starting with energy choices and savings. We bring value to consumers, utilities and a growing ecosystem of smart partners through integration of all these types of devices to bring energy intelligence via optimization of home energy use while providing unique insights into a consumer’s energy usage.
We have defined an approach that truly delivers on the promise of IoT. Our integrated solution, which combines a variety of sensor data, our data processing capabilities and ability to present our intricate data analytics in an easy to consume, actionable way has put us in a very unique, leadership position in the market. We need to continue to work with our existing partners, and identify new, innovative partners that will support our commitment to deliver engaging content to the consumer. At the same time, we must continue to work with utility partners to provide consumers with a superior service while realizing the full potential of our energy intelligence capabilities.
What do you think is the biggest driver for the connected consumer market?
Awareness and convenience. The ability to provide consolidated access to many connected devices within the context of one app/portal experience will be key.
What is the greatest challenge for the connected home industry in the next year?
Everyone is working on more intuitive mobile applications that help consumers manage and control their smart home devices, which is great and a logical evolution. But our vision extends beyond setting changes from within an app. We want to develop a deep understanding of the home and a family's energy usage patterns so we can automatically manage energy usage, optimizing for variables such as the weather and presence, bringing new economies to the overall energy grid management. Today, by and large, homeowners have to program their thermostats manually to save energy when they are not home. Given weather’s impact, presence and geo-fencing data, there is new opportunity to bring intelligence and automation to home energy comfort and cost management efforts. Ultimately, this will help us deliver on the promise of what a smart home could do.
We bring energy intelligence to connected homes via automated optimization of energy use, smart demand response, and engagement via unique insights to a home’s energy usage. By integrating data from a variety of sensors, we create a thermodynamic model that measures the impact of external weather data on a home, and how that home reacts. Our unique algorithms then use that intelligence to bring greater energy savings while maximizing comfort -- a recent study found consumers saved 16.5 percent in energy costs when using a connected thermostat integrated with WeatherBug Home than a standard thermostat.
Our analytics also enable greater peak load shed --- last summer we delivered 1.76kW/home in Houston. We are partnering with more connected device companies and utilities than ever before, and there are many other ways to grow our business, so one challenge is to keep up with the demand for our services.
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Ali will speak on the session “Service Providers and Device Makers: Smart Home Friends or Foes?” on Tuesday, May 24 at 9:15 a.m. Other speakers on the panel include Cox, Honeywell Connected Home, Icontrol Networks, and Time Warner Cable.
For more information on CONNECTIONS, visit www.connectionsus.com or register by clicking here.
