Schneider Electric has announced the launch of Wiser Air™, the company’s first Wi-Fi smart thermostat for residential consumers. The company said Wiser Air couples its energy management expertise with intelligent design and state-of-the-art technology to provide consumers with a tool that delivers energy efficient comfort.

Home automation hardware, sold as standalone units, is forecast to exceed 300 million units by 2020, according to Juniper Research. This represents growth of over 1,000 percent from an estimated installed base of 28 million units in 2015.

Carrier announced that KB Home, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, will now include a Carrier Côr smart thermostat in all of its homes at newly built communities opening in 2016 and beyond.

Following the release of the Thread 1.0 technical specification for the connected home, the Thread Group has launched the first phase of its product certification program. Led by the group in conjunction with UL, the program provides testing for products that use Thread to help ensure that they work together securely out of the box.

Parks Associates has released new industry research reports on the smart home and connected devices indicating that security is leading the way in this market area followed by connected lighting and smart thermostats. The new reports provide in-depth analysis of industry trends and consumer research.

Through devices such as smart thermostats that allow users to remotely control household temperatures or LED lights that can be switched on and off from a smartphone, the much-hyped Internet of Things (IoT) concept has arrived in the residential setting, says Navigant Research.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)® and LONMARK International announced that two of their standards — ANSI/CEA-709.5 and ANSI/CEA 709.6 — are now approved American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards for home and building automation.

The global home automation market was valued at $4.41 billion in 2014, and is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.3 percent from 2014 to 2020, reaching $21.6 billion by 2020, according to a report by Transparency Market Research.

The global smart thermostat market is projected to generate revenue of more than $1.3 billion by 2019, according to a report by Sandler Research. The report states that one of the main challenges faced by the smart thermostats market is the high initial cost, which exceeds that of conventional thermostats.