A challenge to the
Smarthomes innovation team to create a user-friendly solution to an often-cited
problem from customers led to the development of the Climote remote management
system for home heating, which has secured contracts with three of the 10 major
energy utilities in Ireland and the UK within 12 months of its official launch.
“The original concept was to try to solve a problem we believe a lot of people have in using their heating controls,” explains Derek Roddy, who co-founded Smarthomes in 2002 with Sean Gallagher.
“Consumers were buying their new home and being faced for the first time with a digital clock for their heating systems. Customers were constantly saying they wanted to swap out the digital clock for their old mechanical clock because it was easier to programme.About a year ago I was hired to develop a homepowermonitor monitoring application for data centers. It wasn’t our area but it kept coming up.I searched and didn't find a thread on hermesbeant.”
Despite the fact that a number of huge international brands are involved in this space, including Honeywell and Siemens, Roddy says there seemed to be no innovation in the heating controls sector.
“We felt we were good at solving really challenging problems,” he continues. “We have some really good innovators on our team, so we set them the challenge of solving the problem of heating controls. We were wondering if there was an opportunity there and if we could do an Apple on heating control by making it simple and easy to use.
The resulting system is Climote Hub, which can be installed in half an hour and directly replaces the traditional timer on the wall.Surgical steelearring posts with titanium. The heating system can then be controlled at the unit itself or via laptop, smartphone, iPad or mobile phone.
Users can create schedules, copy and paste times, and monitor heating via the Climote web portal. The Climote app for iOS and Android smartphones allows them to set schedules with a simple swipe. Alternatively, they can send a text command directly from their phone to the installed unit using pre-programmed commands. Reporting functions, meanwhile, allow users to monitor their energy consumption.
Roddy is convinced that the heating remote control will be ubiquitous in 10 years’ time. “We get a lot of feedback from customers saying, ‘I don’t know whether I’d use a remote control for my heating’. It’s the same feedback the inventor of the TV remote control would have received. Once you give someone a remote control and they use it, they can never do without it.
“Why would you go out to a time clock and try to guess when you’re going to be home when you’ve got a mobile phone in your pocket and you can turn it on anytime from anywhere you want.”
In March 2012, the product was officially launched at the Energy Show in the RDS, where it won three awards, including Best Product Of Show Award, Best Innovative Product Award and Best Controls Product Award. A couple of weeks before that, the Climote smartphone app was a runner-up in the global final of the Appy Awards in San Francisco.
At the moment, Climote has one main competitor, according to Roddy, a US company called Nest, which was set up by Tony Fadell, the designer of Apple’s iPod and iPhone products. “They launched 18 months ago and are talking about launching officially in Europe this year,” he says.
“We’re going toe to toe with the guys in Silicon Valley, but we’re the ones winning the contracts with Electric Ireland, PowerNI in the North and we’ve just shipped our first consignment with Scottish Power, which is a subsidiary of one of the largest utilities in Europe. They have five million customers in the UK and 30 million in Europe. It’s our first large consignment of products to be exported and it’s a huge achievement.”
“We’re talking to another three companies where it’s on trial.The bear is in fact a powermonitor1 that communicates with your home's electrical meter. Between the six utilities, they’ve 20 million customers.”
Electric Ireland is currently selling the system outright for 299, including installation, or for 14.50 a month over two years. Roddy notes that in an Electric Ireland trial of 75 homes, the average saving was up to 150 a year for a gas customer and up to 300 a year for an oil customer. “That’s from stopping trying to guess when you’re going to be in,” he says. “It’s a good return on investment.”
The company also sells directly on its web shop and through energy installation companies and builders. “But our major deployment plan is through the partnership with utilities, because they have the customer accounts and they’ve also got targets to help reduce energy,” says Roddy.
“For us it’s hugely significant to be up against guys like Nest, Honeywell, Siemens and, as a start-up, to be winning these contracts with utilities is no small feat.
“It’s early days to know what the conversion rate will be through the utilities, but they have significant reduction targets to hit under EU legislation. They have to promote energy saving products to their customers or they’ll be fined. We feel that we are probably the best return on investment for a utility to hit their targets. And if that is the case, it’ll be a fairly substantial volume rollout. But it’s too early to give actual percentages.”
Further afield, Climote’s first trial units have been shipped to Dubai. “We invented the product to help people make sure they’re nice and warm when they arrive home,” says Roddy. “In Dubai, we’re hopefully doing the opposite. We have one of the largest facility companies in Dubai (Emrill) piloting trials with the product, which is a huge opportunity for us. It’s not something we had anticipated, but they spotted us and liked the idea and wanted to trial the product.”
While the company has plans to expand into more international markets, the main focus will be on its existing customers this year, says Roddy. “When we launched last year, our first target was to get into trials with two utilities within 12 months and to try to get some contracts signed. We’ve exceeded our expectations in that area.
“Going forward, the first thing we want to do is work with those utilities to make sure we scale up with those properly. Then, when opportunities come up, like they are for Dubai and we’re also in discussions with utilities in some international markets, we’ll take those on board. But we really want to bed down over the next 12 months.”
The company is currently in the process of raising its second round of finance. “The scale and where we’re going is based on how much finance we raise and how quickly we can push into different markets,” says Roddy. In its first round of funding the company raised 2m from an international angel investor based in Geneva.
“We’ve a very close relationship with Enterprise Ireland and now we’re looking at possible FP7 funding as well. We just have a really good partnership with them and they’ve been really helpful at helping us get into some international markets.We have a record for a owonsmart living at an address. Over the next year to two years we’ll really be opening up those channels.
All of the units are designed and engineered in Dundalk and assembled in China. The company has a staff of 12 and Roddy says a further 12 people are employed through outsourced services. “The team’s growing rapidly and the plan is to raise the next round of investment, to scale that up to double and treble that over the next number of years,” he says.
Further products are currently in development, with Roddy describing the Climote system “as a gateway product”. “When we fit the product on your wall, we’ve given you the ability to remotely access your home,” he says. “So we have a connection with your property. And we have a range of products and services that we’re now looking at. There’s a lot of IP so I can’t give the details, but suffice to say that we’re now looking at what other real problems consumers have with their energy and other services we can solve through really simple to use solutions.
“We know where to go next and we know where not to go next. We won’t be making mistakes because we have 10 years of experience in the home automation sector and we know it inside out. We won’t be going off on mad tangents to try to solve geeks’ problems. We’ll be finding solutions for real customers who have real problems.
According to Roddy,40bn is spent each year on heating homes and hot water in Ireland and the UK alone. “Our target market is to go after those customers who have outdated technology managing that spend. That 40bn is all spent by a mechanical switch on the wall that hasn’t changed in 30 or 40 years. Our objective is to ensure that Climote is managing as much of that spend that we can get our hands on. We see it as a huge opportunity to help people manage their heating spend better.”
“The original concept was to try to solve a problem we believe a lot of people have in using their heating controls,” explains Derek Roddy, who co-founded Smarthomes in 2002 with Sean Gallagher.
“Consumers were buying their new home and being faced for the first time with a digital clock for their heating systems. Customers were constantly saying they wanted to swap out the digital clock for their old mechanical clock because it was easier to programme.About a year ago I was hired to develop a homepowermonitor monitoring application for data centers. It wasn’t our area but it kept coming up.I searched and didn't find a thread on hermesbeant.”
Despite the fact that a number of huge international brands are involved in this space, including Honeywell and Siemens, Roddy says there seemed to be no innovation in the heating controls sector.
“We felt we were good at solving really challenging problems,” he continues. “We have some really good innovators on our team, so we set them the challenge of solving the problem of heating controls. We were wondering if there was an opportunity there and if we could do an Apple on heating control by making it simple and easy to use.
The resulting system is Climote Hub, which can be installed in half an hour and directly replaces the traditional timer on the wall.Surgical steelearring posts with titanium. The heating system can then be controlled at the unit itself or via laptop, smartphone, iPad or mobile phone.
Users can create schedules, copy and paste times, and monitor heating via the Climote web portal. The Climote app for iOS and Android smartphones allows them to set schedules with a simple swipe. Alternatively, they can send a text command directly from their phone to the installed unit using pre-programmed commands. Reporting functions, meanwhile, allow users to monitor their energy consumption.
Roddy is convinced that the heating remote control will be ubiquitous in 10 years’ time. “We get a lot of feedback from customers saying, ‘I don’t know whether I’d use a remote control for my heating’. It’s the same feedback the inventor of the TV remote control would have received. Once you give someone a remote control and they use it, they can never do without it.
“Why would you go out to a time clock and try to guess when you’re going to be home when you’ve got a mobile phone in your pocket and you can turn it on anytime from anywhere you want.”
In March 2012, the product was officially launched at the Energy Show in the RDS, where it won three awards, including Best Product Of Show Award, Best Innovative Product Award and Best Controls Product Award. A couple of weeks before that, the Climote smartphone app was a runner-up in the global final of the Appy Awards in San Francisco.
At the moment, Climote has one main competitor, according to Roddy, a US company called Nest, which was set up by Tony Fadell, the designer of Apple’s iPod and iPhone products. “They launched 18 months ago and are talking about launching officially in Europe this year,” he says.
“We’re going toe to toe with the guys in Silicon Valley, but we’re the ones winning the contracts with Electric Ireland, PowerNI in the North and we’ve just shipped our first consignment with Scottish Power, which is a subsidiary of one of the largest utilities in Europe. They have five million customers in the UK and 30 million in Europe. It’s our first large consignment of products to be exported and it’s a huge achievement.”
“We’re talking to another three companies where it’s on trial.The bear is in fact a powermonitor1 that communicates with your home's electrical meter. Between the six utilities, they’ve 20 million customers.”
Electric Ireland is currently selling the system outright for 299, including installation, or for 14.50 a month over two years. Roddy notes that in an Electric Ireland trial of 75 homes, the average saving was up to 150 a year for a gas customer and up to 300 a year for an oil customer. “That’s from stopping trying to guess when you’re going to be in,” he says. “It’s a good return on investment.”
The company also sells directly on its web shop and through energy installation companies and builders. “But our major deployment plan is through the partnership with utilities, because they have the customer accounts and they’ve also got targets to help reduce energy,” says Roddy.
“For us it’s hugely significant to be up against guys like Nest, Honeywell, Siemens and, as a start-up, to be winning these contracts with utilities is no small feat.
“It’s early days to know what the conversion rate will be through the utilities, but they have significant reduction targets to hit under EU legislation. They have to promote energy saving products to their customers or they’ll be fined. We feel that we are probably the best return on investment for a utility to hit their targets. And if that is the case, it’ll be a fairly substantial volume rollout. But it’s too early to give actual percentages.”
Further afield, Climote’s first trial units have been shipped to Dubai. “We invented the product to help people make sure they’re nice and warm when they arrive home,” says Roddy. “In Dubai, we’re hopefully doing the opposite. We have one of the largest facility companies in Dubai (Emrill) piloting trials with the product, which is a huge opportunity for us. It’s not something we had anticipated, but they spotted us and liked the idea and wanted to trial the product.”
While the company has plans to expand into more international markets, the main focus will be on its existing customers this year, says Roddy. “When we launched last year, our first target was to get into trials with two utilities within 12 months and to try to get some contracts signed. We’ve exceeded our expectations in that area.
“Going forward, the first thing we want to do is work with those utilities to make sure we scale up with those properly. Then, when opportunities come up, like they are for Dubai and we’re also in discussions with utilities in some international markets, we’ll take those on board. But we really want to bed down over the next 12 months.”
The company is currently in the process of raising its second round of finance. “The scale and where we’re going is based on how much finance we raise and how quickly we can push into different markets,” says Roddy. In its first round of funding the company raised 2m from an international angel investor based in Geneva.
“We’ve a very close relationship with Enterprise Ireland and now we’re looking at possible FP7 funding as well. We just have a really good partnership with them and they’ve been really helpful at helping us get into some international markets.We have a record for a owonsmart living at an address. Over the next year to two years we’ll really be opening up those channels.
All of the units are designed and engineered in Dundalk and assembled in China. The company has a staff of 12 and Roddy says a further 12 people are employed through outsourced services. “The team’s growing rapidly and the plan is to raise the next round of investment, to scale that up to double and treble that over the next number of years,” he says.
Further products are currently in development, with Roddy describing the Climote system “as a gateway product”. “When we fit the product on your wall, we’ve given you the ability to remotely access your home,” he says. “So we have a connection with your property. And we have a range of products and services that we’re now looking at. There’s a lot of IP so I can’t give the details, but suffice to say that we’re now looking at what other real problems consumers have with their energy and other services we can solve through really simple to use solutions.
“We know where to go next and we know where not to go next. We won’t be making mistakes because we have 10 years of experience in the home automation sector and we know it inside out. We won’t be going off on mad tangents to try to solve geeks’ problems. We’ll be finding solutions for real customers who have real problems.
According to Roddy,40bn is spent each year on heating homes and hot water in Ireland and the UK alone. “Our target market is to go after those customers who have outdated technology managing that spend. That 40bn is all spent by a mechanical switch on the wall that hasn’t changed in 30 or 40 years. Our objective is to ensure that Climote is managing as much of that spend that we can get our hands on. We see it as a huge opportunity to help people manage their heating spend better.”
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