IPSO Looks at Smart Homes

 October 12, 2011, IPSO Alliance, Santa Clara, CA–The IPSO Alliance had Stuart Sikes from Parks Associates talk about the many technology opportunities residential energy management offers. The opportunities for IP connected products and services include saving energy, money, enable lifestyle control convenience, fuel the extensions of machine-to-machine communications, and take greater advantage of eh cloud capabilities.

Some of the results consequences of installing 5M smart meters are the development of an advanced meter infrastructure. Other responses include the creation of an independent residential energy management industry providing over 200 products. Some of these products are do-it-yourself installations and others provide or require professional installation. These independent systems will continue to grow through ’20 when the utilities finally move in to recover their domains.

Service providers are offering security, energy management, communications for controls and other services. These products offer energy and money savings for out-of-house management, and enable a lifestyle upgrade. About 30 percent of the current users are accessing home safeguard services and another 30 percent are changing their lifestyles. This latter group is open to spending more than people using other services.

These new disruptive technologies like smart phones, IP-enabled devices, and new delivery services like Netflix and iTunes create new service bundles such as monitoring and energy management, access control, health monitoring, and security. They also drive a rapid decrease in overall revenues and the creation of de facto standards. The low cost controllers are starting to set the standards for home control. Machine-to-machine communications are increasing in white goods and new forms of sensors. Now, the utility and service providers have to start working on a control cloud to take advantage of the changes in infrastructure.