Nokia has gone all eco-friendly, and cut a deal with a German energy company to allow heating and energy use in the home, from the mobile phone. Instead of leaving your heating on a timer, why not switch it on when you’re almost home?
Increasingly as pricing on wireless broadband connections come down, more and more devices will be able to speak directly to a mobile data network as operators around the world try to make their networks indispensable. Home appliances like freezers, heating systems, security cameras and video equipment are all expected to have direct connections to a mobile network over time. Nokia will target security, energy efficiency, health applications, construction and real estate with remote handset aware systems.
Nokia is not the only company targeting this and arch rival Qualcomm already actively working on a similar platform with operators in the US, especially around health applications.
For Nokia this is a new front, targeted at automating homes from a remote PC or smart phone and the Finnish company has launched an open software platform which will allow applications such as monitoring and controlling home electricity use, remotely switching devices on and off, and monitoring home temperatures, security and other cameras, and motion sensing equipment. We would also expect it to work with devices which give out personal health telemetry readings to remote health workers.
Nokia is hoping that this will provide a focal point for more home automation and says it will attack security, energy management systems, and ventilation applications and hopes to attract third parties to its Home Control Center to integrate existing offerings. Nokia claims that because it is plug and play on a phone, and that the modern phone has a decent degree of security, it should replace existing efforts in this area.
“We see there is growth potential in the smart home market”, said Teppo Paavola, Vice President, Head of Corporate Business Development, Nokia. “The home of today has intelligence everywhere, but to date there has not been a solution that is interoperable with wide range of home systems that can easily be controlled. We want to create an open solution where external partners can develop their own solutions and services on top of our platform. We believe that the mobile device is an ideal interface to control home intelligence, especially when the user is not at home.”
Nokia also announced a partnership with one of Europe’s biggest energy companies, Germany’s RWE (Rheinisch-Westf’lisches Elektrizit’tswerk) aimed at developing systems for managing energy consumption and a CO2 footprint in the home.
The two plan a fully remote managed system by late 2009 focused on home heating management with a central control unit together with remote-controlled thermostats for individual radiators. The user interface will be the PC and the mobile phone.
The German power company RWE will offer special energy deals if people agree to use its new energy saving devices. The two will also work together on smart meter reading via the cellular networks by 2010. These will also allow consumers to control their energy bill by being constantly aware of what they are spending.
Other partners that Nokia has lined up to build systems include Danfoss, Delta Dore, Ensto, and Meishar Immediate Community (MIC) and Zensys.