Universal Ramblings

According to the website, Hohm is:

“Microsoft Hohm is a free online beta application that helps you save energy and money. With Microsoft Hohm you can better understand your home energy usage, get recommendations to conserve energy and start saving. As with any recommendation engine, Hohm will provide increasingly more accurate and relevant suggestions for energy conservation as its users contribute home energy input and feedback. One of the objectives during our beta period is to refine our tool and further increase the value our product can offer to you.”

Hohm works by tracking one’s energy consumption and providing some optimization advices, based on the information that is provided by the user, or by sensors. Hohm will provide an estimation of the savings induced by a proposed change (use different light bulb, choose a different time to plug your electric car ) and will track the actual results after you follow the advice. Hohm will constantly refine its data to provide ever more pertinent advices.

The good thing about Hohm is that there is a path that is completely data-entry free. Microsoft has built APIs that let utility companies upload your energy consumption data (with your permission), just like Quicken gets your banking information directly. This could be automated to the point that you don’t have to take care of it. That’s great. However, right now, only a handful of companies will support the direct communication with Hohm.

Microsoft and other home energy monitoring companies plan to work with device manufacturers to get energy information from thermostats and “smart plugs.” That would allow a person to attach a smart plug to a refrigerator or dishwasher to get usage information in real time to a home network or Web application. Over time, those appliances could be controlled to dial down usage during peak times.

Hohm is Microsoft’s response to Google’s PowerMeter and similar services. Hohm is dedicated to giving consumer’s information about potential energy savings, while at the same time connecting those consumers whose energy providers already use smart meter technology with real-time information about their own energy consumption at home.

It’s also noteworthy that Hohm was developed on top of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.

For more details, you can visit http://microsoft-hohm.com and learn more about the product. We think that the ease of tracking one’s power consumption and the option of having cheap smart plugs all over the house is a winning combination, but remember, the smart plugs are not required. If it works as advertised, and if users enroll in mass, Hohm’s greatest impact in the short term will be to raise awareness. We think that “if it can be measured, it will be improved”, and Hohm seems to be a great tool for that.