Energy management is a huge benefit of the smart home, and more and more companies are offering easier ways to monitor and control your home’s energy usage through their app on your phone. The next level is to offer smart ways to automate the process to save money without you having to think about it.
Swedish furniture giant Ikea has just taken a small step towards offering this to users of its smart home platform Home Smart. This week the company launched an Energy Insights feature to monitor your home’s energy usage and announced that its first smart energy monitoring plug, the Inspelning, will be available in October.
The new Energy Insights feature is limited to Sweden at launch, and Ikea is calling it a “pilot” whose insights will be used to study how it can be scaled up and made available to other markets.
According to Ikea, Energy Insights provides real-time data on local energy consumption and electricity prices, comparing your home’s consumption with that of similar households. This allows you to adjust how and when you use more energy-intensive devices to save money and reduce energy consumption.
The company plans to provide actionable energy-saving tips on Energy Insights “in the future,” along with personalized recommendations on Ikea products and services that help reduce energy consumption.
“While the launch of Energy Insights is currently a pilot in Sweden, it represents a significant step in our strategic initiative to explore smart energy solutions,” said David Granath, Range Manager at Ikea of Sweden. “This is a small start in our journey to help our customers save energy and make informed decisions around their electricity consumption.” He said they plan to continue improving the app and expanding their offering of smart products, which deal with energy costs and consumption in the smart home.
Energy Insights can function without smart energy monitoring devices, said Granath. When you provide the app with details about your home, you receive data and comparisons based on general information about local energy consumption and electricity prices. You can also receive further information if you grant the app access to your smart meter’s energy data.
While none of the smart home platforms currently offer Matter energy monitoring, many offer features that provide insights into energy usage in your home. It’s likely we’ll see a sharp increase in these types of features, as well as more support for energy management across the smart home. Energy monitoring combined with the automated, intelligent management of a home’s energy use offers enormous potential to help us both reduce our energy consumption and save money.