Itron, Inc., a company that helps utilities and cities manage energy and water, and Samsung SmartThings, Inc. are working together to provide an integrated energy experience by sharing utility data between Itron’s industrial IoT (IIoT) network solution and SmartThings’ smart home IoT platform.
The companies plan to combine their respective IoT platforms to unlock the user experience and enhance value to both the consumer and the utility through improved distributed energy management, accelerated carbon reduction and enhanced consumer engagement.
The collaboration will combine Itron’s distributed intelligence (DI) ecosystem, which features millions of connected endpoints, with SmartThing’s Smart Energy application (as well as third party devices), which works with Samsung smart appliances, to provide real-time energy readings and consumption patterns to improve energy management and conservation. The combined solution, which will support multiple connectivity options, will bring together real-time consumption data from the meter, behind the meter assets and appliances all within the SmartThings Energy app, giving consumers a complete picture of their energy consumption.
This will empower consumers to gain greater visibility into their energy use and reduce their usage while enabling utilities to improve overall grid management and visibility as well as advance carbon reduction goals. For example, utilities will be able to enhance their demand response (DR) programs with AI Energy Saving mode combined with high-fidelity real-time data from Itron’s IIoT solution to initiate DR events for participating consumers, reducing the energy load of their appliances.
Benefits of the collaboration include:
- Enhancing value to consumers: A complete view of consumers’ energy consumption can be obtained through the application, which displays both the whole house real-time consumption information provided by Itron as well as the preexisting app features that show real-time data use of smart appliances.
- Enhancing value to utility: Utilities will be able to engage the rapidly growing base of SmartThings app users to enroll in energy efficiency, demand response and EV charging programs. A total of 200 million people have downloaded the SmartThings app, and Samsung expects to grow to 500 million users within five years. This combined with Itron’s millions of connect DI devices will allow utilities to enhance their distributed energy management programs.
- Enhancing the enrollment experience: SmartThings’ enhanced enrollment experience can be applied into utility programs for energy efficiency, demand response, and EV charging – directly from the SmartThings application. Using this view of energy consumption over time, utilities may identify likely customers to enroll EV and solar customers into the application.
- Enhancing innovation with improved high-fidelity data: Itron, its utility partners, and SmartThings can leverage the cloud-to-cloud integration to provide consumers with an easy, secure way to authorize data access to DI application data, whole building consumption data and more. Consumers can also securely share data from their millions of connected devices with the utility or authorized third parties to enable seamless collaboration.
- “We are excited to join forces with Samsung SmartThings to drive the future of IoT, combining Itron’s unequaled track record of success in delivering utility outcomes with SmartThings’ expertise in consumer engagement,” says Don Reeves, senior vice president of Outcomes at Itron.
- “Combining two industry leading IoT platforms is a game changer for energy management. This collaboration will significantly accelerate consumers’ understanding of their energy use, combining information from smart energy devices such as Samsung appliances, electric vehicles, solar panels, heat pumps, thermostats and more. This optimizes the use of green, renewable energy and reduces the carbon footprint.”
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