Keeping cool with the Internet of Things

The cold bothers me. Living in Melbourne my house was never warm so that bothered me greatly.

I remember driving home on cold winter nights, snug in the heated interior of my car, and dreading arriving home to my cold, unheated house. I would huddle in my car outside the door, working up the courage to leave the comforts of the heated cabin and wishing that SOMEHOW, the heating would have been turned on and my house would be warm.    

And then there were those days Melbourne’s temperature dropped by more than 20°C in an hour.  I might be out and about in a summer dress, when the heavens would open and the temperature would drop faster than I could ever imagine. I’d scurry home, again wishing that SOMEHOW, my heating would be on and my house warm.  

There was a solution to the first of my problems. I could leave the heaters on all day - neither an environmentally sound nor, given the exorbitant cost of electricity in Victoria, a budget friendly option.  I could install timers on the heaters, and set them to turn on at a particular time.  While useful, this was still not ideal – I was rarely home at the same time every night, and so would overuse. I had never come across a solution to the second of my problems.   

Until I heard of NEST, a business that uses the Internet of Things to provide a solution to both of my problems. 

NEST offers a thermostat that links your home’s heating and cooling devices to the internet.   You can then access your account over the internet to adjust the temperature of the home.

Imagine working late, and being able to turn your heating on with your smartphone just as you leave work, arriving home to a nice, warm house without unnecessary electricity costs.  Or being able to turn on your air-conditioning while mobile at just the right time, so the house is cool when you arrive home.  Or going on holiday, and forgetting to turn off the pre-programmed heating or cooling – now simply turn it off from your phone.

But the benefits of NEST don’t stop there.

NEST developers recognize that programmed thermostats give excellent electricity savings, but that few people program their thermostats to achieve the cost savings.  And so they made the NEST device smart. In the first few days of use, it learns your schedule and what temperatures you like at what times. It then creates a personalized schedule, automatically adjusting the thermostat so you don’t need to. 

Combined with the ability to control your device from outside the home, this equals serious electricity cost savings.  NEST estimates that this system can reduce heating and cooling costs by around 20%.  At Australia’s prices, that’s a significant amount of money.

And I’m not the only one who is impressed by NEST – Google just handed over $3.2 billion to acquire the company in a bid to move into the home automation market.

Clearly Google valued the nascent technologies and vision of NEST’s founders more than the immediate opportunity of a smart thermostat. This is why it will be so interesting to follow where Google and NEST move next, and which home devices they are able to make a part of the “The Internet of Things”.