Cisco shows off home energy device, sets utility trial

Cisco today unveiled a slick touch-screen in-home device and back-end cloud service – along with a trial with Duke Energy – that will help deliver on its ambition to be a major player in the home energy management market.

While Cisco’s initial push will be to work with energy utilities, it sees additional opportunities to push its device and home energy efforts through retail channels (alongside its home router business), as well as via telecom service providers.

“There are many channels this could go through,” said Larry O’Connell, manager of product marketing for Cisco’s Home Energy Management Solutions. “Cisco has a great enterprise sales force to sell this through the energy market. We can enable retail channels if that demand-pull pans out. And we have a great service provider organization to work through, as well.

The new device (Cisco Home Energy Controller) and cloud service (Cisco Energy Management Solution) is part of the larger Cisco Home Energy Management Solution, which in turn is part of the vendor’s even larger Connected Grid portfolio, including products ranging from specialized smart grid routers for energy substations to data center solutions for utility back offices. (Read: "Cisco makes opening play in major smart grid push").

The home energy products are designed to give consumers a greater level of control over their home energy use, as well as create a more two-way communications path with utilities that will for the first time enable true supply-demand management of in-home energy use. For instance, a utility could not only send a signal to the home that energy availability is running low during a certain time period, but it could also send a price signal that would leave it up to consumers whether or not they want to pay for usage at that price, O’Connell said.

Cisco is initially showing off the interface for managing that interaction in a stand-alone device, but the same capabilities could be delivered via a Web portal or mobile app. In addition, the device can support other apps beyond energy management, including horizontal apps such as e-mail or YouTube viewing or even other vertical apps, O’Connell said. “This device could get uninteresting very quickly if all it did was energy management in the home,” he said.

The hardware and software user interface could also be delivered by some entity other than the energy utility – with telecom service providers being prime candidates, given their existing network connection into the home and ability to deliver related services, not only voice and data but new applications such as tele-health, home security and more, O’Connell said.

Indeed, home energy management is a tricky market, given all the big-name players vying for a piece of the action. Although Cisco is placing bets on a home energy controller and back-end management services, it is staying out of other key markets, such as smart appliances/plugs and smart meters, relying on partners in those areas.

It does, however, see a huge opportunity in providing network infrastructure for the smart grid, earlier this year unveiling customized routers/switches specifically built for energy/smart grid needs.

The Cisco energy management device works by letting consumers set policies and schedules for energy use based on historic consumption as well as real-time feedback down to the individual appliance level. The consumer has full control of all the devices connected to the network, including thermostats, intelligent plugs and smart appliances. The device sports a variety of network interfaces including Wi-Fi, ZigBee and encoder receiver technology. It will be available starting this summer in North America.

The vendor’s cloud service, meanwhile, is used by utilities to manage data from thousands of homes and integrate that information back in to their own back-end energy management applications.

In addition to the home energy management solution, Cisco today unveiled the Cisco Network Building Mediator Manager 6300, built for commercial energy management – ostensibly an even bigger opportunity.