Alarm.com, Vienna, Va., has launched ‘Smart Schedule’—a new home energy feature that, for the first time, enables homeowners to optimize their thermostat settings by seeing their home’s actual activity pattern, based on data reported over time by the security system.
The new feature is an enhancement to the company’s emPower home automation and energy management solution and is a free service enhancement for its integrated emPower thermostat users who have an advanced interactive service plan. By tightly integrating the home energy feature with the security system, user's can intelligently program their home's smart thermostat based on historical activity patterns to further optimize energy consumption.
Alarm.com first launched its emPower solution in the summer of 2010 with the goal of making it easy and affordable for its Dealer Partners’ customers to achieve greater energy efficiency, convenience, and control. Today, Alarm.com is supporting over 100,000 emPower subscribers across North America. Alarm.com Smart Schedule Activity Patterns is another innovation that connects the valuable information from the Interactive Security System to make energy management easier for customers. Through Alarm.com’s web-interface, users can intelligently program their home’s smart thermostat schedule based on historical activity patterns to further optimize their energy consumption.
New value add for customers
“An energy management system is much smarter when it's connected to a home’s day to day activity patterns,” said Alison Slavin, Alarm.com vice president of Product Management. “Because our energy management solution is integrated with our security services platform, we have the unique ability to leverage data from the security system about activity throughout the home. With this increased insight, users are empowered to schedule their heating and cooling systems to run more efficiently and save money.”
Smart Schedule Activity Patterns was piloted by select Alarm.com Dealer Partners and their customers early this year. The response from users was very positive. A reply from FrontPoint Security customer Samuel Christie explained, “I like having this type of data. This is great for helping to drive efficiency. Having more stuff like this available on your website only further enhances the value of this product.” He also stated, “We liked how well it worked with our first-floor HVAC system that we bought a second, identical thermostat for our second-floor system. Both are now connected to Alarm.com, and it's working out really well.”
FrontPoint Security Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Peter Rogers said, “We are excited to include the Smart Schedule enhancement as a part of our home management line up. Partnering with Alarm.com allows us to offer our customers ways to reduce energy, save money and help the environment while providing additional value in their security system.”
