Back in the early days of the modern smart home wave, folks got excited about the idea of home energy monitoring. Much of the early buzz centered around smart thermostats, but while products like the Nest learning thermostat could help you to better understand and control your home heating bill, they weren’t much help in providing insight into how energy was being used around the home.
Enter home energy monitoring products like CURB and Sense. These products took energy monitoring home-wide, providing granular understanding about how much energy each home appliance and system consumed.
Handy, right? But here’s the problem: Since these products go inside the home’s electric circuit panel, a consumer would need to hire an electrician to get them installed.
That’s a significant hurdle for any new technology, and one that CURB understood pretty quickly. The company, which raised over $180 thousand on Indiegogo for their home energy monitoring system, sold their product through the usual consumer channels like Amazon, but found much of their volume went through professional installation channels such as the construction, home improvement and solar installers.
They thought if most consumers needed a pro to install their system, why not just put their technology directly into the panel itself? That way when someone builds a new home, remodels or goes solar, a pro could simply install a “smart panel” with granular energy monitoring inside.
As it turns out, this idea appealed to companies who make home energy panels like Schneider Electric, which is why the biggest provider of home energy panels and circuits worldwide decided to partner with CURB to integrate the technology with their Square D panels.
Source: CURBS