A Partnering Frenzy Fuels Smarter Homes

The steady emergence of smarter homes does not center on cool gadgets only, though adoption of these devices is important to track. No, smarter homes are gaining traction in a more meaningful way due to something else: partnerships. In recent weeks, a variety of enterprises have joined forces to promote smarter dwellings, often with cleaner and more efficient energy use as an objective.

Plenty of Deals with a Smart Solar Flare

Sunverge is at the forefront of the partnership movement. On June 16, it announced a deal with Eaton to collaborate on efforts to accelerate the growth of the smart home market by integrating Sunverge’s intelligent energy management platform with Eaton’s energy management breakers. Sunverge CEO Martin Milani said in a release that they aim to deliver “significant upstream gains through near real time orchestration, aggregation, and dynamic load management at the distribution circuit level, resulting in both better resiliency and far greater overall system flexibility and reliability” for utilities.

Sunverge announced a similar deal with LG in January to integrate its platform with LG’s solar module technologies, energy storage systems, and smart appliances. The partnership’s goal is to provide utilities an all-in-one solution for smart home energy management, distributed energy resource (DER) control, and flexible load management.

Meanwhile, other firms have entered the partnership frenzy:

• Sense, a startup selling an intelligent home energy monitor, announced in early June that more than 150 new solar installers had joined its Sense Pro program since June 2019.
  
• Sunrun will join with Southern California Edison to launch one of the first residential energy storage virtual power plants (VPPs) in the US. The solar installer also has a deal with Orange & Rockland, a wholly owned subsidiary of Con Edison, to deploy rooftop and battery systems as part of an innovative VPP project supporting New York’s transition to clean, reliable, and locally generated electricity.
  
• EnergyHub, a provider of DER solutions for utilities, announced a partnership with solar provider Vivint Solar. By adding Vivint Solar to its partner ecosystem, EnergyHub seeks to help utility clients grow the size of battery DER programs and enhance options for residential customers who can earn rewards for contributing to the local grid’s health.
  

Partnering Not Limited to US

In Scotland, a new partnership aims to deliver smart homes of the future. HALO Urban Regeneration and Construction Scotland Innovation Centre plan to use smart home designs to develop sustainable building components along with low carbon heat solutions in a project in the town of Kilmarnock. The nearly $78 million project will be built on the former site of the Johnnie Walker bottling plant.

Consumer Support for Cleaner Energy Helps

Consumers are increasingly willing to transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources and solutions to power their smarter homes. Results from a recent survey by the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative illustrate this overall attitude among US respondents: 62% are willing to switch to electric heating, 68% are open to electric cooking, 70% are open to electric water heating, and 78% are open to powering other home appliances such as yard tools, generators, sump pumps, and generators with electricity instead of fossil fuels.

Guidehouse Insights’ Home Electrification report details this trend toward all-electric homes. To overcome the complexities and meet the demand for increased electrification, vendors have slowly but surely come to recognize the value of partners that can deliver smarter solutions.