Resideo Technologies (NYSE: REZI) has acquired energy efficiency technology assets from Whisker Labs, a CE Pro BEST Awards winning company, and hired the team behind it.
The technology is said to create a thermodynamic model of a home to accurately predict home heating and air conditioning run time and energy use to enable a homeowner to use less energy while maintaining comfort.
The thermodynamic model is created by taking local weather data from hundreds of thousands of weather sensors throughout the U.S., then combining that data with information about the home, which is gleaned from the homeowner's cloud-connected smart thermostat. That data then can optimize the heating and cooling of the home to save energy.
“That thermodynamic technology is the main reason we made this acquisition,” says Scott Harkins, vice president at Resideo. He says the thermodynamic mapping information will allow an integrator to offer homeowners a program that can automatically adjust their thermostat to save them money, similar to what certain utility companies do now for certain homeowners. In those demand response programs, homeowners allow the utility to remotely adjust the temperature in their home so the utility company can avoid brownouts and other stresses on the grid.
Now, an integrator will be able to offer something similar to their clients, but instead of the utility benefitting, it will be the actual homeowner who benefits from reduced energy bills, according to Harkins, who also sees a strong RMR play for dealers.
“Imagine an integrator going to his customer and saying, 'If you pay me $5 per month, I could save you $150 per year in energy bills,'” he says as an example. “Through our software, the integrator can remotely adjust a home's pre-set temperature schedules based on outside weather data to help homeowners use less energy.”
“Whisker Labs has been a great partner for us, and adding this capability is yet another example of our commitment to compelling growth opportunities that strengthen and complement our smart home offerings through the use of intelligent data,” says Mike Nefkens, president and CEO of Resideo.
“With our presence in 150 million homes and unparalleled channel of 110,000 professional contractors, we are in a prime position to deploy this technology at the next level, making our smart home products even smarter while saving homeowners money on their energy bills.”
Related: Resideo Debuts Next Gen Security and Smart Home Platform at ISC West 2019
While Resideo has acquired its energy management assets, Whisker Labs itself will continue as a separate company focusing on its arc-fault Ting technology.
This deal marks the second acquisition by Resideo since it became a standalone, publicly traded company following its spinoff from Honeywell in October 2018.
The company acquired Buoy Labs, a provider of a WiFi enabled smart home solution that tracks the amount of water used in a home, at the end of March.
Resideo says the technology complements the company’s portfolio of connected thermostats, including the Honeywell Home T-Series smart thermostats — the T9 and T10 Pro — which feature wireless smart-room sensors to deliver a desired temperature to a specific room in the home when and where it’s needed.
Resideo will look to strategically integrate the energy efficiency technology into the company’s smart home comfort offerings, according to the company.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication Security Sales & Integration's website.
