Honeywell's thermostat with Opower software

Honeywell, one of the world’s largest thermostat makers, tells me that twenty years ago it tested out thermostats that can learn the home owner’s behavior and adapt the heating and cooling accordingly, but ultimately decided that consumers didn’t take to them, and would rather control their thermostat themselves.

I asked Honeywell’s President of its Environmental and Combustion Controls division, Beth Wozniak, in an interview if Honeywell was interested in making learning thermostats, because there’s been so much discussion about the startup Nest, which has created what it calls the world’s first learning thermostat.

“We found that consumers prefer to control the thermostat, rather than being controlled by the thermostat,” said Wozniak. Instead of learning thermostats, Honeywell is focused on adding intelligence to digital and connected thermostats through simple UI, mobile apps, and partnerships like its one with Opower.

Opower will be providing the analytics and data to help Honeywell use home and building thermostats for demand response programs, where utilities can ask home owners to turn down their heating and cooling slightly during peak times of day. The Opower thermostats are being piloted with utilities right now, including at PG&E. The Opower software will also be used to create new ways for the home owner to save money on their energy bill, and Wozniak says by the end of the year the partnership will launch other products too.

For Honeywell, connected thermostats are still a small part of the company’s overall thermostat sales. While Wozniak declined to say what percent or what volume of Honeywell’s thermostat sales are connected thermostats, she said it’s the very early days of the connected thermostat market. Honeywell sells a whole host of other connected home products such as humidifiers and security systems, and a “total connected home system.”

Who knows if Nest and its learning thermostat will one day make a dent in the thermostat market, but Wozniak acknowledges that the startup has brought some much-needed attention to consumer thermostats in general. “Cell phones and tablets have set a whole new bar for how things can be connected.”

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One of the most obvious trends from the big smart grid conference DistribuTECH last week was how much analytics and big data tools will be used to try to remake energy in 2012, from curbing energy consumption, to reducing energy loss, to adding in more clean power to the grid. Here’s 10 ways that analytics and big data will start to shape the production and consumption of energy in the world:

1). Weather data: Having a finger on the pulse of constantly changing weather data on a micro and macro level can help utilities, building owners and consumers optimize their energy consumption habits and promote energy efficiency. Startup EnergyHub recently partnered with sensor network player Earth Networks to use weather data to make a more efficient form of demand response (utilities controlling power consumption). Other startups like EcoFactor, Opower and Tendril also use weather data as part of their energy behavioral analytics.

IBM has long sold a weather prediction service called Deep Thunder to municipalities, organizations and utilities, which use it to do things like tailor their services, change routes, or generate more or less power. I think weather data could some day provide a platform for some very important next generation services and applications for energy efficiency, much in the way that location data is used as a platform for a variety of services.

2). Cell phone data: Cell phones in our pockets are essentially palm-sized sensors and computers sending a constant stream of information to the cloud where companies could one day use that data to create energy efficiency and better energy products. And yes, a lot of that data is private information, but after that data is anonymized it can be used for the greater good of the community — particularly via the billions of cell phones in developing countries. A startup called Jana does research projects around cell phone data in developing countries, and looks to work with NGOs on programs to create better infrastructure, energy infrastructure and resources.

3). Connected thermostat data: One of the biggest trends from DistribuTECH this year was the overwhelming amount of smart thermostats that are now being sold and marketed. Companies can incorporate that thermostat data into data bases that can be used to promote energy efficiency. EcoFactor’s service remembers every time a home owner overrides the automated smart thermostat system and changes the personalized service to accommodate that manual override. Using 100,000 connected thermostats (which produce 5 billion data points each month) EnergyHub found some interesting statistics like folks in cold climates have a lower average heating temperature set point than households in warmer states.

4). Hadoop & energy databases: The open source data base tool Hadoop is well known — and oft used — in the computing worlds. But in the energy and utility worlds it’s quite rare. However, as the amount of energy data has started to rapidly grow from the smart grid, some companies are embracing Hadoop as a key way to manage energy info. Opower tells me it’s using Hadoop (and the company commercializing Hadoop, Cloudera) as an important way to manage its massive energy data streams. Likewise PJM has turned to Hadoop as a way to organize the energy data coming off of a synchophaser sensor project.

5). Clean power data: One of the main goals for the smart grid is to enable the addition of more variable clean power, which is far more unreliable than fossil fuels (the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow 24/7). Analytics crunching the data from a utilities’ energy supply and demand can help make clean power a little less variable, by being able to more accurately predict the environmental conditions, as well as more accurately assess demand from energy users.

6). Electric car data: Electric cars will by their nature be connected cars, using information technology to manage the vehicle charge and location. Utilities will be closely tracking the charging habits of electric car owners in order to make sure that the grid isn’t overloaded in some early adopter neighborhoods.

7). Power line sensors: One of the areas of low hanging fruit for the power grid is the simple task of helping utilities find blackouts more easily and be able to monitor and manage grid outages. That’s partly where sensor systems called synchophasers come in, which can in real time monitor the health of power lines, collecting multiple data streams per second. Expect all major networks to have synchophaser systems installed over the coming years.

8). Real estate data: Startups like First Fuel Software can use big data to make super accurate assessments about buildings and ways to reduce the energy consumption of buildings — without any extra hardware or monitoring software being installed at the building. Things like weather around the building, demographics of the people in the building, and the building’s historical energy consumption can be used to create an accurate projection. The best way to make a building more energy efficient is by getting as much data about the building;s energy use as possible.

9). Variable pricing: Some day when electricity is sold throughout the world at different prices dependent on supply and demand, massive data bases will be needed. This type of variable pricing is offered in some places in the world, but if it ever becomes ubiquitous it will help curb consumption, by offering high prices when energy is being over used.

10). Using behavioral analytics to curb energy consumption: Getting into the brains of energy users is the job of startups like Opower and Tendril (after it acquired Gr0unded Power.) Essentially these companies have collected data on consumers and demographics and they are using it to try to guess the best way to influence the consumer to do things like upgrade their home appliances and lights to more efficient ones.

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Mobility has changed the chip industry already, but the rise of the iPhone and devices such as e-readers are only the beginning. If we’re going to create an Internet of things that connects back to a cloud powered by millions of servers, the chip world will have to change drastically to reduce power consumption, shrink in size and embrace new architectures. Fortunately these things are already happening, and here are three startups that showcase the big upcoming shifts.

SuVolta

SuVolta doesn’t want to design chips, it wants to make the process that fabrication plants will use to build the devices. Its technology cuts the energy used in chips in half, and requires a fairly simple tweak of the chemicals layered onto the chip during the manufacturing process. The resulting chips made using SuVolta’s process are just as fast but consume about half the power.

This power reduction is cool, but it’s not the main reason why SuVolta’s on this list. SuVolta tweaks both the manufacturing process and the circuit design. But the process works best for systems on a chip, as opposed to stand alone processors. A System on a chip (SoC) is when multiple types of processors are placed on a single chip as an integrated package.

SoCs are common in the mobile world because they are a way to cram more functionality into a smaller package and they consume less power. SuVolta’s President and CEO Bruce McWilliams, believes SoCs will be the way of the future for how most chips are built.

Ambiq Micro

Ambiq is commercializing technology out of the University of Michigan to build a real-time clock designed for sensors. The clock consumes less power, but also takes over functions that currently involve other chips in order to reduce the power usage of the sensor even further (yup, it’s like an SoC microcontroller). Scott Hanson, the CEO and co-founder of Ambiq explains that today’s sensors usually contain a microcontroller, a clock that puts the chip to sleep and wakes it as necessary, a power supply, a sensor of some sort (typically a MEMs device) and a radio.

But Ambiq combines the clock and the microcontroller so the chip requires less power and takes up less space. Some proposed uses of the chip include implanting it inside the human body, or a chip that can run on tiny solar cells the size of a penny (see image).

As we put more sensors on devices and inside our infrastructure, Hansen believes we’re about to open up a new frontier for chip design firms who can build chips for the sensor web. Ambiq is his bet on this, but he expects many more. With an investment from ARM, he’s not the only one betting on a new generation of chips that will need specialized microcontroller and a smaller size, the British licensing company clearly sees an opportunity as well.

Adapteva

The demand for power in mobile devices and in the servers that power large web sites such as Facebook or Google has led to a boost for ARM, which licenses a chip architecture that trades performance speed for power efficiency. For phones this is fine, but for tablets and even servers, it may be time to think up an entirely new architecture. That’s where Adapteva comes in. The company has rethought a RISC-based architecture for chips and built massively multicore chips that are built to run in parallel or independently.

Much like an older startup called Tilera, which is also building massively multicore chips for data centers, Adapteva thinks that x86 doesn’t offer the energy efficiency needed, while ARM doesn’t offer the performance that next generation mobile devices such as tablets and servers will need. So it’s borrowing the concept of massively multicore chips from the high performance computing world and dialing it down for tomorrow’s mobile applications and up for the next generation of HPC. In the coming years, we’ll see more massively parallel chips, but we’ll also see a willingness to jettison the tried and true architectures as we embrace more specialty computing.

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Solid engineering talent is such a prized resource nowadays that many tech firms have taken to doing acqui-hires, which is the practice of buying a company for its employees rather than for its products or technology. But it’s not just startup founders and programmers who are benefiting from this trend — the open source community has been a winner as well.

On Wednesday, LinkedIn announced that the technology behind IndexTank, the search engine startup it acquired back in October, has been released as open source software under the Apache 2.0 license. At the time of the deal, it was pretty clear that the IndexTank buy was motivated largely by talent: The company had 11 employees, nine of whom were engineers, and financial terms of the deal were kept under wraps. The technology IndexTank built was very compelling, but the team behind it was likely the most attractive aspect to LinkedIn.

That’s why it’s good news that IndexTank’s code will live on, and that others will be able to build on top of it. IndexTank essentially build software to help search and query large amounts of data, even on devices with limited processing power such as cell phones. It’ll be interesting to see what people do with this now that it’s open source.

It seems that releasing acquired technology as open source software is a growing trend for acqui-hire deals. Earlier this week, for example, Twitter started releasing the code from recently-acquired mobile security startup Whisper Systems as open source software. Some people may see such open source releases as consolation prizes, but it’s better than the alternative: Historically, a startup’s customers worry about products languishing or being shut down altogether after an acquired by a larger firm. These open source releases mean that technology will live on, regardless of what happens with often unpredictable M&A integrations.

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In the past, we never truly considered that kids might need cell phones. In reality the notion of children even having a cellphone sounded mad to us. Nowadays nonetheless , it's actually quite reasonable for kids to have cell phones of their own. Since our children take part in more and more activities after school and on the weekends we've got a greater must be able to contact them because they're away from us so often. And since they're collaborating in so many activities without us, they are exposed to more risks in the world today. With the threats of drugs, alcohol, crime and other enticements, we often feel more comfortable when we know they've got a telephone available if they should need help in getting away from bad situations.

At the same time, while we want our youngsters to have the security of a cell phone, we do not need the cost of the phone to destroy the budget. When you start looking at phones for youngsters, you will see a whole gamut of options. Of course, your youngsters will often require the latest gizmos that are decked out with all coolest features. But I am absolutely certain you know what that suggests for you.

The latest technology with the top features indicates you will spend a lot of cash on that phone and then have some extra charges for all of the features. And if you simply want your kids to have a way to get in touch with you while they're out with friends or are busy with after college activities, having the most recent phone decked out with the web and a bunch of apps isn't really obligatory. Naturally, your kids will often think differently.

All you really need when it comes to phones for kids is a basic telephone that can make and receive phone calls. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to put that cell telephone on an expensive calling plan. Pre-paid telephones can be a good way to get an inexpensive phone for your kids while also teaching them about the responsibilities of telephone ownership. Not to mention, it will not break your financial position. Another thing you'll need to think about; nonetheless is how much parental control you would like to have over your youngster's cell phone usage. Only some of the phones will enable you absolute control over what your kid has and hasn't got access to while using their telephones.

Some of the more dear telephones (the ones that your children really need) may supply you with the control that you need while the cheaper telephones may not really offer this. When you get the telephones that offer maximum parental control with the newest technology and programmes, your kids may think you are rewarding them with the phone, when you're truly doing it for yourself. But when you think about buying phones for kids, you'll need to establish how much you are prepared to spend and how you would like to spend it.

Learn more now Cellular Technology | Phones for kids

Cell phone towers on the sky line of Old Delhi.

There are far more cell phones in India than there is access to sanitary toilets — about 600 million out of 1.2 billion Indians have ready access to a clean bathroom, while 800 million Indians have cell phones. That rather shocking stat, was an a-ha moment for Swapnil Chaturvedi, an entrepreneur who has been working on sanitation projects in India’s slums and who was looking for an idea to help him reach many more millions of Indians with clean toilets.

Chaturvedi’s idea is the awesomely-named Poop Rewards, a startup that creates an incentive program using cell phone talk minutes and other prizes to convince Indians that don’t have easy access to toilets to use designated public toilets in their area. These cell phone users are extremely price sensitive, explained Chaturvedi to me in an interview after winning first prize at the business competition Startup Weekend Delhi, and he thinks this demographic will be willing to change their behavior (or use a public toilet) to save a little bit of money or earn free cell phone talk time.

How it works

With a phone company as a partner, more public toilets could be built in the necessary areas — the U.N. estimates it only costs 0 for a low-cost toilet — and cell phone companies can use the rewards program to retain low-price conscious customers and provide a public service, which can also help with loyalty.

The Indian cell phone market is becoming increasingly commoditized and Indian cell phone companies are struggling to find ways to end churn (customers hopping to the next cheaper cell phone carrier offering a deal). Chaturvedi says carriers like Airtel spend a significant amount of money just trying to keep its customers from leaving for a competitor. In the same way that the airline industry was saved by rewards programs that gave free miles to loyal users, cell phone companies can create rewards programs around sanitation that can also give back to the community, says Chaturvedi.

Down the road, Chaturvedi envisions the program could be an open source tool that local entrepreneurs in developing areas can use to create their own Poop Rewards programs with carriers. But Chaturvedi is still just figuring out his business model, he tells me.

Development of an idea

Like all good entrepreneurs, Chaturvedi has pivoted a bit on his original ideas. He had been working on a type of toilet that could convert human waste into electricity, and he’d received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to work on that. But after going over the math, he kept realizing he was only going to be able to reach a very small population relative to the problem because the project required funding and lacked incentives. His new idea, Poop Rewards, could potentially work with the waste-to-fuel toilet, but it is more focused overall on just boosting a sanitation network.

Chaturvedi hopes to start a pilot project with a test toilet and user group in the coming months (Airtel is really interested, he says). Make way for the Poop franchise. Though, yes, there are a bunch of hurdles ahead, like convincing a carrier for a deal, and launching a program that does actually produce a behavior change.

Along the way no doubt he’ll need some funding, and most of the startups at Startup Weekend Delhi were looking for funds. At the end of Chaturvedi’s pitch, angel investor Dave McClure (see disclosure below) told Chaturvedi that his pitch was the best of the day and that he is interested in potentially funding the project.

Additional thoughts

If you’re still not getting the problem he’s trying to solve, think on these two things: poor sanitation leads to increased sickness and death from water borne diseases. It’s also time consuming to have to go search for a somewhat private place for a bathroom break, and this is particularly burdensome for women.

Poop Rewards’ cute/weird/funny name also stood out from the beginning of the Startup Weekend event compared to many of the other teams that went with confusing or boring names. While sometimes funny names can be gimmicky, they’ll always at least gain attention and turn heads, and a little attention is usually a good thing in an elevator pitch session.

Disclosure: Geeks on a Plane, founded by Dave McClure, covered part of the cost of this reporting trip.

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