Emphasized this year at the Smart Energy Summit in Austin was the need for utilities and connected home platforms to work together to create a better experience for the connected consumer. Many of the summit's panel speakers touched on this, and Parks Associates home energy management research continually highlights this growing need.

One of the areas where partnerships are most needed is in gathering, analyzing, and communicating data trends within the home energy management industry. Consumers need data to better understand how to save energy, utilities need data to better understand how to create a positive consumer experience and how to reduce operating costs, and devices and platforms need data to better understand how consumers are using their products. Essentially, data needs to be communicated between all three parties for a seamless experience.

Dr. Kenneth Wacks, who was a featured speaker at the 2014 Smart Energy Summit, serves as the chair for the Home-to-Grid Domain Expert Working Group, which recently published a whitepaper study titled Broadcast-based H2G Communication Solutions. In the whitepaper, the group discusses how data transmission via an FM radio network can serve as a real-time communications application between utilities and residential devices.

The group notes that using this method could result in a win-win situation for both utilities and broadcasters—utilities are presented with a low-cost optimization strategy for electrical outputs, and broadcasters will provide a unique and important service to their local communities.

For more information or to download this whitepaper, click here. 

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