By Philip Dawsey

This is the time of year when the heat starts rolling in and we all want to seek out that sweet AC! But all that cool air comes at a cost, so at EcoFactor we want to give you some insider tips on how to keep those bills low while you stay cool.

The basics:

• Close your blinds or curtains during the day to keep sunlight out and keep cool temperatures in.
• Turn up the thermostat. For each degree the thermostat is raised for an 8-hour period, you can save 1 to 3 percent in cooling costs. The US Department of Energy recommends a summer thermostat setting of 78 degrees or higher.
• Minimize the use of heat and moisture-generating appliances like ovens, stoves, washers, dryers and other major appliances. When you do need to use them plan to do it before noon or after 8 pm.
• Regularly clean and/or replace your air conditioner filter, check your coolant levels, and clear leaves and debris from the condensing unit on the outside of the house to help your unit run at full efficiency and supply better air flow.
• Reverse the direction of your ceiling fan. By changing the direction to counterclockwise in the summer, the fan will circulate the cool air. With this cooling effect, you can raise the thermostat three to four degrees and feel just as comfortable. If the room is unoccupied though, turn the fan off since it doesn’t actually cool the room.

Advanced (beginning with the easiest):

• Get a smart thermostat. This is the latest technology that can save 10% over a programmable thermostat and let you control your heating and cooling remotely. EcoFactor’s solution automates many of the functions so you don’t have to make all the small adjustments to optimize your energy use. Many utilities and other service providers offer rebates or free programs, so check with your local utility or cable provider for more information.
• Sign up for a home energy assessment to understand where you can save energy. Utilities also offer discounts for this service.
• Upgrade your windows and insulation to retain cool air better.
• Install outdoor shading for a natural way to cool your home. Either plant a tree or purchase a sunshade to protect your home.

Don’t let your pocketbook feel the pain from this year’s hot months. Take action to stay cool and save money. Let us know how you plan to stay cool this summer at marketing@ecofactor.com!

By Philip Dawsey

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a hot topic these days and pretty much all the major players are heavily invested. IoT is the next frontier for tech growth and is worth fighting for with Navigant forecasting annual revenue from shipments of residential IoT devices to increase from $7.3B in 2015 to $67.7B in 2025. With so many players entering the market I thought it would be interesting to look at which ones might be successful and win the IoT game of thrones! The five houses I’ll explore in this post are Google (Brillo), Apple (HomeKit), Samsung (SAMI), Lenovo (NBD), and Amazon (2lemetry/AWS). Each with their own platform for connecting devices, they face off to decide who will reign over this vast empire.

Before jumping into my analysis of each platform, let’s understand what these platforms do and why they’re important. Consumers and vendors want their devices to talk to other devices, thereby making each device that much smarter. Each IoT platform wants devices to communicate and connect on their platform and thus reap the rewards of this control. EcoFactor’s home energy management services, for example, will become much more effective if we can send and receive data freely with any security system and any connected door lock.

While several platforms may live to see the end of this war, there will be only one or two who dominate the landscape just as we have seen with other tech platforms like mobile and desktop. Right now the details of each army (or platform if you’d prefer) are still not completely clear but the infrastructure looks remarkably similar, making it even more likely that several will fail. So without further ado, let’s take a look at who is a pretender and who may ascend the IoT platform throne and win the right to connect our IoT devices!

By virtue of Android, Google has already ensured compatibility with a majority of American mobile phones, the most important device in the IoT. With nest, Dropcam, Revolv and the Works with nest program, they are also well on their way to bringing a large number of other devices onto their platform. Promises about quick development, broad support and detailed reporting are yet to be verified, but with a base in Android, there is little reason to doubt a strong offering. For service providers like EcoFactor, it will be important to see how easy it is for devices to work with each other and share data, which is critical to getting the most out of the IoT. The primary barrier for Brillo is whether the killer app or killer device will go to another platform. Will Google be hesitant to certify competitors to nest or will an Apple product become the must have device in every home? Overall, Brillo (Google’s second IoT foray after Android@Home) looks well defined and Google’s experience bringing device manufacturers onto a platform certainly bodes well.

Apple has many of the same advantages as Google, basically controlling the other half of the smartphone market in the US. There are also already a growing number of compatible devices in the Made for iPhone (MFI) program, including in-house hardware from Apple in development. If a device wants to be part of the program however, it requires a specific wireless chip and software package, which may turn off some manufacturers but it will also ensure the consistent experience Apple is known for. In a departure from the past, even if devices currently in the home are not MFI compliant (they use a rival protocol like Zigbee or Z Wave), there will be a “bridge” made available soon to ensure they can connect. This will likely come in the form of a hub and provide manufacturers the opportunity to sell one more piece of hardware. Wi-fi devices, however, will not be able to connect due to security reasons, which will certainly create some limitations. Another downside to consider is that HomeKit does not offer a truly open system for direct communication between devices, possibly limiting the potential of many IoT devices and making it a less appealing platform. Overall, HomeKit is a promising platform with strong support already, but the “openness” seems to be a mirage and I think restrictions will really limit many devices and functionalities, making this a less than ideal platform as it stands.

Samsung is a device manufacturer at the core, and has decided that all of its IoT devices will be open and not locked into a proprietary ecosystem. This makes sense because they make everything from smartphones to washers to memory chips and want to sell those products regardless of what platform or protocol they communicate through. Samsung acquired SmartThings in August 2014 to serve as a hub that allows many different devices to communicate on various protocols. It more recently announced its Artik chipset and SAMI (Samsung Architecture Multimodal Interaction) IoT platform. SAMI is meant to be as neutral and open as possible, likely more as a means to drive sales of Samsung chips and devices than to serve as the platform of the future for the IoT.  Other manufacturers, like Whirlpool, who compete with Samsung are unlikely to connect to this platform making it difficult for Samsung to attract enough devices to make this THE IoT platform of the future. Ultimately, Samsung’s primary goal seems to be moving the IoT ecosystem forward in order to increase hardware and service sales rather than anything else and so this platform will not likely be a long-term solution.

Lenovo is another giant hardware manufacturer getting into the IoT with devices like their new C1, a google glass competitor. The NBD platform, designed to support communication between devices, will initially target the Chinese market. While this may seem far away, Chinese manufacturers including Huawei and Xioami are making huge inroads all over Asia and if IoT device adoption is faster in Asia than in the US, this could lead to a more mature market and platform. Despite this potential though, a lot more information is needed to feel comfortable with this as a platform for the future. Currently there is no foundational infrastructure in place yet and no clear plan for recruiting devices onto the NBD platform. Lenovo is similar to Samsung in that it seems to be more interested in using NBD as a platform for driving hardware sales and ensuring compatibility of their new devices. Since the announcement of the NBD platform in mid-2014 there has been very little news, which is likely an indication that this may be a project to learn more than anything else.

And last but not least, Amazon recently purchased 2lemetry who developed an IoT platform that is protocol agnostic and claims to be able to connect any communicating device. This acquisition comes on top of Amazon’s rollout of their Dash buttons, the echo home assistant, and purchase of Kinesis that processes and analyzes high-volume data streams from many sources in real time. The platform seems to focus more on enabling machine-to-machine deployments for Amazon’s core commerce business than being a platform for the world to build around. Right now it looks like Amazon is looking to stay involved in the internet of things and understand how it can help their business rather than become the ruler of the realm.

Each of these platforms will work with partners, grow, and evolve with the changing landscape, but from my perspective Brillo is the early leader with HomeKit in close second due to their strong mobile bases. The keys to victory, however, remain unclear. Will it be – the sheer number of compatible devices, a killer app, a streamlined development environment, or something else? What we do know is that the result of this IoT platform game of thrones will stay with us for years to come!

Guest post by : Joey Anderson – Business Development Associate

Rising rates… Increasing customer scrutiny… A growing number of alternatives to the traditional power delivery model…

Utilities are feeling more competitive pressure than ever before, and are looking to drive customer engagement with new services.  Energy efficiency and demand response programs are some of the most common responses to this trend. The looming question though, is how to successfully execute these programs.

As a recent Utility Dive survey of utilities concluded, “Convincing customers to care and proving return on investment are the two biggest obstacles utilities face in deploying successful residential customer education programs.” 43% of utilities surveyed noted the difficulty of customer education around energy efficiency and demand side management programs.

At EcoFactor, we offer a simple solution: show customers the dollar impact of their energy efficient actions. When customers log in to EcoFactor’s white-labeled mobile app, they see savings projections.

EcoFactor Energy Savings Report Screenshot

What about demand response (DR)? According to the Utility Dive survey, 20% of utilities deemed DR the most important area for their residential customer education programs. But when utilities trigger a demand event, turn the A/C off and make life hot and uncomfortable, won’t residents get angry?

At EcoFactor we deal with this using big data.  When utilities call a demand event, EcoFactor uses home thermal properties, past customer preferences, and weather data to create a personalized DR load shed schedule for each customer. Residents always have the ability to opt out, yet most end up participating through the entire event.

Ongoing Demand Response Event Screenshot

The results have been amazing. In 2013 and 2014, NV Energy ran 54 demand events using EcoFactor, including a stretch of eight in a row. Very few customers decided to opt out, with 12% fewer overrides than the next best performing thermostat during the pilot phase.

By the end of the year, NV Energy’s residential thermostat program had saved their customers an average of $100/home/year, received an 86% satisfaction rating, and had a Total Resource Cost (TRC) of 1.33.

When utilities show customers the benefits of energy efficiency measures, and prove that they can trigger DR without sacrificing comfort, customer engagement improves! It’s one very effective way to combat these new pressures facing utilities.