Five trends for the smart energy home of the future

Spread over the acres of the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) floor space in Las Vegas, over half of the thousands of exhibitors were involved with the smart home. The smart home section was filled with companies that are using home wireless networks and connected devices to make houses operate more conveniently, more comfortably, and in a more environmentally friendly manner.

Below are five trends from CES that are informing the smart energy home of the future:

• Solar and smart energy: If a home has solar panels on the rooftop, the owner is going to want to understand how much energy they are generating and how much energy the home is consuming. A solar customer has already agreed to spend on solar panels, so the move to adding extra smart energy home tech is not all that big.
• Electricity draw equals family awareness: A growing trend from both startups and large companies is using the monitoring of home electricity to deliver services around ‘family awareness’. Energy sensors, combined with algorithms, can alert parents which a child comes home and starts using the Xbox, or when the garage door opens.
• Smart lights need to be simple: Now that lights can be connected and controlled with Apple and Google software, the consumer electronics show is starting to see an influx of these goods. Osram’s multi-coloured Bluetooth-enabled bulb that connects with Apple’s Home app and Siri was on display at CES. Lutron announced at the show that its lighting products now work with Samsung’s SmartThings platform and Nest’s motion-detector video camera.
• Tech for better air and water: Besides energy, other resources such as air and water are starting to draw the attend of the tech industry. In countries with air pollution problems, such as China, indoor and outdoor air detectors and purification systems are starting to gain more widespread adoption. A French company has created a showerhead that uses integrated LED lights to change the colour of the water coming out of a shower. The water spray moves from green to blue to purple to red as the user consumes more water in the shower.
• Batteries, the quiet workhorses of CES: Smart devices, whether they are in the home, the car, or on the wrist, are using the latest lithium-ion batteries as the energy source to store electricity charged by the grid. While there were few next-gen battery innovations at CES, Panasonic displayed a flexible lithium-ion battery under development for wearables. Other tech companies were focused on building the latest processors or software that can make sure devices are using batteries as efficiently as possible. Qualcomm displayed its latest Snapdragon 835 mobile chip that is said to consume 25% less power than its previous model.

For more information on the smart home section at the CES in Las Vegas, see full article.