Delta EE - Home Energy Management in Europe: Lots of solutions, but what’s the problem?
The revolution in „Smart Homes‟ and home energy management (HEM) is sparking serious interest in the European retail energy market – with over 100 HEM systems already being deployed. But what these systems should look like and be capable of is far from clear. The functionality of products today is already diverse – ranging from basic energy usage displays at one end of the spectrum, to devices offering home automation and enabling utility control of appliances at the other.
Product developers, utility energy suppliers, telecoms companies and media providers are attempting to identify the value proposition for customers – and key to this is delivering a product that engages and excites consumers.
Delta is a leading European consultancy focusing solely on markets for energy technologies on the ‘customer side of the meter’, including microgeneration, heat pumps and cogeneration. HEMs have a key role to play in this space and are a core focus for Delta’s ongoing research. In this White Paper, the first of a series on the HEMs market, we give examples of the range of products being deployed in order to identify key trends in technology and which products look set to dominate.
HEMs are evolving in complexity and capability, but huge uncertainty remains around what the customer wants, and who should deliver this
Our key observations and conclusions:
- We see a sharply accelerating trend towards more intelligent and sophisticated HEM products.
- How fast to the kitchen drawer? In-home displays could be an ‘evolutionary dead end’.
- The utility role in product deployment is critical today, but may be short lived.
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