As I sit in my study, with winter approaching at a breakneck speed, I noticed the heating has turned on and I couldn’t help but think how inefficient heating an entire house is to keep one 4 x 4 meter room warm. I immediately thought that a small oil heater would probably be more efficient and after a short online search, found myself deep down a rabbit hole… Oil vs Electric vs gas and various costs which was all a little too much for the time I had so I left the central heating on.
One of the things I am going to be going to see at CES is how far Smart Homes have come on and where it intersects with the climate agenda and movement. Details are starting to come out about what to expect but are we going to start seeing an integration of it all. Ideally, I would like to be able to walk from one room to another and if in the room long enough, the heating will switch priorities, similarly if there are multiple people in the house.
Without too much thinking, we have Nest, Blink and several other home monitoring systems, will they start integrating with smart heating, air purification, and be able to determine time of day and then assign the most cost-effective way of heating? Night time when electricity rates plummet is uses the plug in oil heater or wall mounted glass heater and during the day the gas boiler fires up and send the heated water to specific rooms via smart thermostats.
The possibilities are all there, but who is going to be first at linking it all up in a cost-effective manner that the general public can afford. I suspect it will not be any time in the near futures, just looking at solar panels and even that’s still a decade or more away from mass adoption.
Let’s hope some visionaries are out there at CES and are starting to look down this path.
Technology & Digital Consultant, Property Industry, Photographer, Videographer, CAA Approved Drone Pilot, DIY Enthusiast, FA Coach, Solution Finder & Thinker.