[Discussion] Homey Adds Smart Home Energy Management with New Features and Dongle

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Homey Enhances its Offering with New Energy Management Features and Dongle

The LG-operated smart home platform, Homey, pushes boundaries in energy management by adopting a new energy tab and rolling out a smart meter dongle. This move represents a significant stride towards establishing a comprehensive home energy management mechanism.

Smart Home Energy Observance with Homey

Homey has incorporated a fresh energy management section into its application to trace and scrutinize energy expenditure from compatible smart technologies, encompassing appliances, plugs, thermostats, and EV chargers. Recently, the company unveiled the Homey Energy Dongle for Europe, developed to integrate directly with a smart meter for overseeing home energy consumption.

The combination of software and hardware advances brings Homey closer to realizing an exhaustive home energy management network. The forthcoming years would manifest automatic dynamic energy pricing in Homey's innovatory plans to facilitate automatic operations for events like EV charging during periods of low power rates.

The public beta of the new energy management feature is accessible to all Homey Pro and Homey Cloud users. Additionally, their dongle is available for preorder for €39 in select European countries, with shipping projections for March 2025.

Homey's Role As a Smart Home Platform

Homey, oriented around a smart home hub, provides potent local-based Homey Pro or lightweight Homey Bridge options. Homey's capabilities extend to connecting and regulating an expansive array of smart home gadgets via diverse radios including Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Thread, and IR. There also exist possibilities for cloud-based connections and compatibility with other bridges such as the Philips Hue, demonstrating support for the Matter smart home standard.

The Energy Management functionality operates uniformly with all gadgets linked to a Homey setup, regardless of whether they utilize a proprietary local/cloud API, Zigbee, Z-wave, or Matter for connection to Homey.

Energy Monitoring and Management with Homey

The energy dashboard employs visual mapping to exhibit live electricity, gas, and water usage, is compatible with relevant hardware, and offers historical data. Homey also exhibits the potential to keep track of solar generation, oversee EV charging, and display energy provision or consumption from the grid.

This new feature harmonizes with smart batteries and can index high energy-consuming devices, which aids in recognizing areas for potential energy consumption cutbacks. Users can also input their energy costs for price evaluations. With a future plan for dynamic pricing support, Homey is geared up to offer more to its users.

LG's Acquisition of Homey and Future Plans

Earlier this year, LG acquired Homey with a vision to fuse Homey’s connectivity and software into its ThinQ platform. Nonetheless, Homey will persist in functioning autonomously. In addition, LG plans to merge its appliances with Homey, an integration that is still in the planning phase.

Home energy management promises to be a crucial determinant in the realm of smart homes as a persuasive rationale for consolidating all your devices. The advantage of an automated system managing energy use domestically could lead to notable energy and monetary savings, an aspect already recognized by several smart home companies.

The new Matter smart home standard now includes energy management in its specifications, along with support for several core devices. This reflects substantial advancement in home energy administration, and Homey's latest efforts present another alternative for users seeking to optimize energy efficiency and minimize expenses via smart home technology.

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