Dave Oberholzer, Director of Energy Products and Business Development at Earth Networks - Weatherbug, responds to this industry question: "What do you think is the most challenging issue for your company as it relates to the residential energy management market?"

The most challenging issue is customer adoption, and this has two elements to it:

1. General consumer adoption of the Internet of Things, and connected thermostats specifically.

2. Consumer acceptance of the benefits. Every thermostat OEM talks about 30% savings, but this is with significant lifestyle change, and I think most consumers discount such figures. Our EE savings are in the 10% range, but they do not require any change in lifestyle - just adding algorithms. That is a hard message to get to the consumer in this noisy space.

Dave Oberholzer is speaking at the Smart Energy Summit in Austin on Wednesday, February 19. He is part of the session "Big Data & Analytics: Residential Energy Applications," with other company representatives from Bidgely, Inc.; PlanetEcosystems; and Silver Spring Networks.

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