Microsoft has decided to discontinue its home energy management software service called Hohm.
The announcement comes just days after Google made a similar announced on retiring its home energy management application, PowerMeter.
Both companies say market adoption of the software was too slow to justify continued development. The applications were designed to gather information from a home’s smart meter (or appliances with energy monitoring capabilities) and display it on the homeowner’s computer.
They are clearly ahead of the curve in introducing the software, as the majority of US homeowners don’t have smart meters and have never heard of Holm or Powermeter. Those couple million smart meters that have been installed generally come with pre-packaged software.
Most people aren’t all that interested in monitoring real-time energy information yet, and there have even been issues with electromagnetic radiation and health concerns.
An April 2011 survey by the Consumer Electronics Association found that 64% of US citizens aren’t aware of electricity management programs; just 9% of US households have them.
Utilities too, have yet to get on board, the crucial other leg on this stool. A few utilities are aggressively installing meters, but even those don’t necessarily provide real-time energy consumption data to customers.
Microsoft’s service will operate until May 31, 2012. Google is unplugging its web app in September 2011.
Microsoft announced the decision in a blog post in which the company stated it will continue "developing products, solutions and partnership that span a wide spectrum of industries, such as power generation, distribution grids, buildings and transportations systems."
In April, Microsoft and Ford announced a collaboration to integrate the Hohm service with the rollout of Ford’s electric vehicles beginning at the end of this year.
Microsoft didn’t say whether that collaboration is over. As announced, the Hohm system would have helped EV owners determine when and how to most efficiently and affordably recharge the batteries of their electric vehicles.
OPower Finding Early Success
Opower, which recently got a $50 million venture capital infusion, is working with over 50 utilities (including eight of the 10 largest in the US), and is entering the UK in a big way.
It’s taking a different approach to home energy management. Rather than providing hardware for home energy monitoring, Opower sends homeowners personalized reports (emails, text messages, and printed information enclosed with utility bills) and also offers online tools about their energy usage.
Households are automatically included in the utility program and have to "opt out" if they’re not interested. That’s enabled Opower to achieve 90%-plus customer penetration vs. 10% (or less) for the Microsoft and Google’s approach.
As would be expected, commercial energy monitoring is much more in demand than that for households. Companies/ organizations use much more energy and it’s a much larger expense for them.
Many of the largest tech corporations are still lining up to serve them, such as IBM, Cisco, Intel and AT&T.
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