We're thrilled to announce that starting today, tracking your energy use got a little easier. When you buy Blue Line’s PowerCost Monitor and WiFi, your real-time home energy use will be wirelessly uploaded into your Hohm profile. You no longer have to wait for your electricity bill – you can make a significant difference in your monthly energy use today.
By enabling devices like the Blue Line PowerCost Monitor to connect into Hohm, you will receive more detailed energy use information than what you are currently getting on your monthly bill. And with our easy-to-use graphs, you can quickly see how to save the most energy and money. For instance, check out the impact hot weather and an air conditioner working overtime had on energy use in the graph below on July 8:
And if we look at what was happening in the house that day, the graph really comes to life:
- At about 9:00 a.m., the air conditioning was turned on and ran briefly.
- At about 11:00 a.m., the air conditioning was turned off.
- At about 1:00 p.m., the air conditioning was turned on again briefly, and then turned on for the rest of the day at about 3:00 p.m.
- At about 11:00 p.m., the air conditioning was turned off and dishwasher completed its cycle.
Hohm captured all this information in real time from the Blue Line monitor and made it easy to see and understand; and in the graph below you can see the corresponding impact this had on energy cost for the day (please note that to calculate energy cost we estimate energy costs regionally based on data we collect ).
Obviously this won’t mean the end of air conditioners, but we do think it will raise people’s awareness about how much energy their appliances are using and make smarter decisions accordingly. In fact, studies show that consumers who use energy-monitoring devices can save up to 15% on their bill. With an average Hohm Score in the U.S. of 61 and an average annual electricity cost of $1,244, this means consumers could be saving hundreds of dollars a year just by monitoring their energy use.
Providing this level of insight with easy tools to manage and reduce your energy use is what Microsoft Hohm is all about. So I encourage you to buy Blue Line’s PowerCost Monitor and WiFi and connect it into Hohm and begin saving energy and money today. The monitor is safe and easy to install (no electrician required), easy to use and a wonderful addition to the Hohm experience. Check out this video to see for yourself.
For regular readers of this blog, you already know that our vision for Hohm is to create a healthy ecosystem of connected devices in your home. Our announcement today is just one step toward our longer term goal of connecting to smart plugs, HVAC, smart appliances, smart thermostats, lighting, electric vehicles, and just about anything else that uses energy. We see a future where—through Hohm—all of these things can work together seamlessly to provide everyone with convenient tools to understand, manage and reduce their energy use.
As always, I encourage you to engage with the Hohm community on Facebook and Twitter to learn more about what you can do with Hohm or to share your own experiences and recommendations.
--Troy Batterberry, General Manager, Microsoft Hohm