How does energy management factor into control systems?
What I see happening today in the residential market is these systems are centered around entertainment. Over time, what we’re actually doing is putting in a backbone infrastructure for energy efficiency and management in the home. The issue today is people want to save energy but it’s not simple on an everyday basis to do that. So you have a programmable thermostat but it’s pretty static. But your life isn’t like that, so you’re still not getting the maximum efficiency out of that programmable thermostat. You have it tied into your home and you push a simple button as you leave and it arms the security system and turns the HVAC back and it turns the lights off. Then it’s just part of your life rather than being on a static schedule. Over time, we’ll be able to expand and tie that back into the electric distribution and energy management of the home. Today they pretty much charge you a static rate for your energy but as time goes, more and more residences will be demand-based and in th
