Get Smart

HOW IN-HOME TECH HELPS UTILITIES AND THEIR CUSTOMERS SAVE ON ENERGY.

- Marty Swant

A DECADE AGO, long before the Internet of Things was an industry buzzword, Reliant, a Texas-based energy company owned by NRG, began installing smart meters in homes across central and eastern Texas to read energy consumption per house more than once a month. First was a weekly email to prevent “sticker shock” by showing a customer usage for the past week. Later came a mobile app, and earlier this year, it debuted voice commands through Google’s smart speakers and thermostats from Google’s sister company, Nest.

Fast-forward to today, and the company can now collect as many as 96 readings each a day. Reliant’s algorithms also can tell when a customer has a major usage change—maybe the air conditioner ran out of freon or there’s a duct leak in the attic— and let them automatically know if something might be wrong.

To both better help customers understand their energy usage and use it more efficiently in the process, utilities have spent the past few years investing in emerging technologies that can help preemptively meet the evolving needs of consumers—and in the process also help the energy providers themselves.