Switching the heating off with a mobile phone

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Switching the heating off with a mobile phone

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Controlling the budget per iPhone: New technology makes it possible. With the simplest of solutions for everyone to start-ups to bring the consumer to operate energy management. A mass market with billions of potential – even the giants like Microsoft and Google pushing for it.

The energy sector has a new fashion trend. The iPhone App. The German company eQ-3 has written a program window, radiator, light switches and dozens of other things in the budget controlled by finger. The U.S. start-up Control4 provides a home management system that automatically dims the light and Filmegucken PC and TV turns off, as long as the kids homework – even this program can do recently iPhone and iPod Touch control.

And not enough. Similar products offer the company Ecobee, Lutron and Tendril. The company Visible Energy drives the business principle to the extreme – it has now been a published app, although the associated energy management system until Next year will be in stores.

The fact that the App-delusion now beginning to affect the energy sector, is no accident, but calculus. The stylish mini-programs to do a technique that does not create more than a decade of breakthrough in the market, trendy finite. It’s about smart home. The vision of an intelligent, energy-efficient house.

By the beginning of the nineties, the electronics industry has developed the technical basis for this: a semi-intelligent control of components known as EIB (European) installation bus. Has done little since then. Several times, the boom of the Smart Homes was proclaimed and came not. Ecological and technical enthusiasts have installed the systems, but many others, they are still too expensive and too susceptible to interference.

That should change now. The debate on climate change has made energy conservation to social value – and the technical infrastructure of electricity companies is facing enormous changes which will make consumers easier than ever to push the costs through smart energy management.

Clever power favors new multibillion-dollar markets

Background: Around the globe governments modernize their electricity networks with billions funding programs. A Smart Grid arises, a smart grid to measure where the energy flows in many places in real time and can be controlled (see photo gallery below). A huge market of the future arises because energy, eco and IT sectors together here.

The idea of smart homes fit into this market. For the smart energy network will allow electricity tariffs, which vary every hour to supply and demand, smart home management systems which can save a lot of money. Smart home solutions might then be worthwhile for everyone. And she could be sexy – with iPhone Apps and other playful solutions that make the complex technology to use for everyone.

Gaining power for consumers

The vision of the new energy start-ups: The average consumer of the future will no longer annoy once a year on its electricity and gas bill, but can control the consumption of individual devices within minutes. He is to be programmed system so that it is working on resources.

Cleantech ( "clean technology") is the buzzword. Market researcher Pike ResearchWho has specialized in this sector, looks at the home management systems in the U.S. alone by 2015, a market with up to 28 million customers. Martina Ecker, cleantech expert at investment bank Jefferies, expects major appliance manufacturers introduce as early as 2010, the first Internet-enabled washing machines and refrigerators in the market. They could communicate with the relevant systems. Some companies are already offering to so-called smart plugs, network adapter, the wireless devices also very old.

Hundreds of providers now depend on a boom, a – and get ready for a brutal cutthroat competition. Because the technology is developed since the nineties, there is already an oversupply of producers. Experts expect similar battles as in the founding of the Internet, as Microsoft and Apple with dirty tricks were fighting for supremacy.

"Everyone hopes to land the big coup," says analyst Ecker. "Start-ups to Microsoft and Google want to soar the wily power system. They attract hundreds of investors and venture capitalists."

No wonder that even the tech giants are aimed at this market. Microsoft empower consumers with the system Hohm more power control over the Internet. Google tinkers around with another control, the Google Power Meter. With it, households can reduce their consumption will rapidly by an average of 15 percent. The U.S. multinational General Electric is a partner.

iPhone as bait

Only about one of the providers still puzzled: What do customers really mean? There is a lack of studies on how they intend to monitor their devices and what they expect from a system that governs their household energy for them.

The iPhone Apps from eQ-3, Control 4 and other providers as fit into the picture worth – industry experts as they attempt to advertising and reality check. "The iPhone has much driven by its service to use the mobile Internet," says Martin Vesper, managing director of EnBW’s subsidiary Yello Strom. The hope is that this has on the acceptance of other innovations such as the control of household transfer.

Away from all the PR strategies can integrate mobile phones into the energy actually be useful. You can "serve as a remote control for various electrical appliances or send an SMS when the washer is finished," said David Leeds, an analyst at Greentech Media industry service. Still, consumers are not really that far. According to a research study, Pike can imagine, only 13 percent of respondents to manage their electrical appliances in the future via smartphone. This requires persuasion.

Say: "The technique is so customer friendly as possible in order to make the breakthrough – in terms of functionality, price and distribution. And even if a small manufacturer provides good solutions, it is not immune, according to analyst Ecker being punched by Vermarktungsoffensiven of major corporations from the market.

A risky business – but still important, says expert Leeds. For the ordinary consumer plays an important role in the power grid. According to a Study of the U.S. Department of Energy is approximately one quarter of all energy consumed in the households.

Through intelligent power management systems Leeds hopes for a "Toyota Prius" effect. At the Prius hybrid vehicle caused a craze – and fired an eco-debate in the auto industry.