ENERGY ON THE EDGEOregon's energy
entrepreneurs and innovations
'Honey, I'll be home soon — but you've got the thermostat
too high!'
THE SITUATION
Public awareness about energy issues is at an all-time high.
Consumers are taking matters into their own hands by purchasing
efficient clothes washers and electricity from renewable
sources. But reducing the demand for electricity through
intelligent use of energy and appliances at home might be the
most powerful tool for alleviating the energy crunch.
THE INNOVATION
Along come Rich and Bill Clem, whose Tigard-based startup,
Eeco, is bent on making a negawatt —the energy you don't use — as sexy as
a megawatt. "Everybody is creating alternative energy. We
decided this is something we could do," says Bill, 49, the CEO
who's an industrial designer. (Rich, 44, is an electrical
engineer who worked at Triquint Semiconductor.) In pursuing
tools for consumers to more tightly control their energy use at
home, they noticed the dashboard display screen in a Toyota
Prius hybrid that shows real-time miles per gallon was a
powerful thing: Drivers learned how to avoid inefficient moves
in their car — say, quickly accelerating when the car was
using gas — because they were getting constant feedback.
Eeco's first product, due out this spring, will provide that
same sort of interaction with home appliances. A wireless
system monitors the thermostat, water heater and other
big-ticket items. The info is transmitted to a Web interface
accessible by computer or cell phone. The user will be able to
see how much energy is being used (and how much CO2 is being
dumped into the atmosphere as a result) and turn down the
thermostat if they wish, from wherever they are.
DOES IT HAVE JUICE?
This month, the Eeco system goes into live testing at five
homes in Oregon. The Clem brothers, who have sunk $100,000 and
many hours at Rich's garage lab into the startup, hope to work
out the bugs in time for a spring launch. The Eeco system
— essentially a new communicative thermostat, appliance
switches and a wireless box— will debut for $1,000. Bill
Clem says that amount can be made up through wise use and
energy savings in one year in a typical 2,200-square-foot
house. But the company's biggest hurdle may be convincing
people that they really need to see their home energy use in
real time. "It's a completely new space," says Bill Clem.
"Electricity is invisible and the only time you think about it
is when you get the bill." The company's first target market is
second-home owners, who typically use their houses for a little
over a month per year. For a service fee, Eeco would monitor
their homes, as well as local environmental conditions such as
temperature and humidity, and do much of the interaction with
the home's systems — keep the pipes unfrozen and warm it
up for arrival. Clem says the company has proprietary methods
that allow heating and cooling of homes in a more efficient and
incremental manner than just cranking up the thermostat.
Monitoring homes for second-home owners is more of a
peace-of-mind play — it will be marketed through security
system vendors and property managers. But Eeco is obviously
pulling for the efficiency savings to be such a slam-dunk that
vacationers will put a system in their first home. And at a
fraction of the cost of Prius, Eeco will also be giving other
green consumers a more affordable chance to change their energy
habits.
— Oakley Brooks
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