Home Area Network (HAN)

A global movement is afoot to make electric grids “smart.” This means adding all kinds of information technology, such as sensors, digital meters, and a communications network akin to the Internet, to dumb wires. Among other things a smart grid would be able to avoid outages, save energy, and help other green undertakings such as electric cars and distributed generation. The hope is for greater efficiency – outages cost the American economy $150 billion a year. The goal is more mouse clicks and less repair trucks and ringing door bells.

The smart grid “applications” market has the potential to be an innovation center just as the mobile phone applications market. The “home area network” or HAN is the technology in the home, the network and applications behind the smart meter. There is general agreement that it will include things such as the household’s power consumption at that instant, thermostats that are connected to the meter and smart appliances that can be switched on and off remotely. The big question is how all these devices will be connected and controlled. Will HAN be dedicated to regulating electricity consumption for instance, or will it also control home security or stream music through the room.

More than three dozen firms are marketing products for the HAN future. One is Control 4 (www.control4.com), based in Salt Lake City – it aims to provide the dominant underlying software in its part of the smart grid. The startups’ devices allow consumers to control almost everything in a house that runs on electricity. A Silicon Valley rival, iControl (www.icontrol.com) which recently raised $23 million from venture capital firms, comes at the HAN market from a different direction. Its gear – cameras, sensors, wireless hubs – it’s mainly used to keep burglars out, but can also be put to work managing energy consumption.Cisco, Microsoft, and Google will probably have intense interest in the HAM market potential.

The iControl approach highlights the potential for technology convergence. The interface of demographic shifts (i.e., the aging global population) and interested awareness and demands for energy conservation illustrates the need for a singular piece of equipment and software – something that can provide interactive home security, energy management, and home health care support tools. Access is important – web, mobile, iPhone, and in-house touch screen access. Monitoring capabilities should include the ability to review energy usage in real-time to track and compare daily, weekly, and monthly trends to pre-set energy and expenditure goals. Home health care has the primary focus of allowing customers the ability to monitor the safety and well being of elderly family members via web portals, iPhones, and other mobile applications.