GERMANTOWN, Md. — Earth Networks® announced that its WeatherBug mobile app is the first to integrate big weather data, connected thermostats, and utility meter data to provide consumers with real-time analytics on how weather impacts their energy usage in order to make smarter home energy efficiency and utility cost decisions.
Earth Networks said it operates the world’s largest network of weather sensors, and its WeatherBug consumer users have grown to more than 20 million. From within the WeatherBug Home area of the mobile app, consumers can now connect to their preferred smart home services — including connected thermostat launch partners Honeywell and Nest, and open smart home platform partner Samsung SmartThings, as well as utility data from Accelerated Innovations’ MyMeter. Once connected, consumers will have access to predictive energy usage and costs, to help them control and optimize their energy efficiency and costs, while maintaining comfort and safety, all from the palm of their hand.
“Fifty percent of a home’s energy usage is impacted by the weather, but today’s smart home technology is restricted to what’s happening inside the home,” said Bob Marshall, founder and chief executive officer, Earth Networks. “With our newest WeatherBug app release we are integrating our hyper-local weather network data with smart home sensors and publicly available home characteristics data to provide energy usage and predictive costs, unique insights not available before now. By offering consumers a hub for their home energy use, we are extending value beyond powering the smart home to enabling a smart consumer.”
Marshall added, “As more consumers connect their home devices and energy company’s data within the WeatherBug Home area of our app, we will leverage our experience collecting massive amounts of data from sensors and unique signaling processing capabilities to not only inform consumers about how the current external weather conditions are impacting their energy usage, but to detect the health of the home’s infrastructure, including HVAC, appliances, and more. We will then automatically optimize connected device operations for the weather and offer personalized suggestions through virtual home energy audits.”
The company said WeatherBug Home was built to become a consumer’s smart home hub that integrates weather data (Earth Networks’ proprietary cloud processes 25 terabytes of real-time weather data every day) with an ecosystem of smart home partners. As a result, Earth Networks is positioned to deliver on the promise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the power of big data analytics by delivering:
• Consumer benefits — Earth Networks’ IoT approach unifies data from multiple sources into a single service, enabling consumers to monitor, control, and optimize their energy usage from a single app.
• IoT partner benefits — Smart thermostat manufacturers and other IoT smart home service partners are now able to deliver enhanced value to customers through insights into energy use and costs by partnering with WeatherBug Home.
• Utility provider benefits — WeatherBug Home’s thermodynamic model approach enables energy efficiency savings and intelligent demand response through the optimization and automated control of HVAC systems, appliances and more. Utility partners get the benefit of greater reliability through improved energy efficiency and more consistent peak load reduction, as well as higher consumer engagement by integrating energy within the weather app.
The WeatherBug mobile app is available for download in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
For more information, visit http://weatherbughome.com.
Publication date: 10/6/2015
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