Belkin Conserve Gateway Aims To Help You Reduce Energy Costs

Belkin announced the Conserve Gateway, a router system that is designed to help you understand and observe meter readings so you can better understand how your home uses energy. The Conserve Gateway delivers this information via a web interface that lets you track your energy use. The Conserve Gateway has a Wi-Fi/Ethernet network interface that can communicate with a cloud-based device management system and data communications are secure. The device supports over the air software upgrades as well.

Belkin Conserve Gateway™ Connects to Smart Meter to Provide Energy Usage Insight in the Home

• Belkin aims to partner with utility companies to provide in-home energy monitoring connected to the smart meter.
• To help make you a smarter consumer, Conserve Gateway translates meter readings so you can now easily understand and, consequently, change how you use energy.

PLAYA VISTA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Belkin today announced its Conserve Gateway, a router system that pairs with your smart meter to provide real-time insight about home energy use. Conserve Gateway delivers this information via a simple and elegant web interface.

The interface allows people to easily track and reduce energy use in their homes and learn conservation tips. Further, it offers utility companies the ability to push information to Conserve Gateway with advice or calls to action, such as: “By using your dryer more efficiently, you can save up to $76 per year.”

Its protocol was informed by extensive ethnographic research that proved most people don’t know what a kilowatt-hour (kWh) is and have even less of an idea about where power comes from.

“We had participants jokingly claim that energy came from rubbing two sticks together,” said Kevin Ashton, General Manager for Belkin Conserve. “Insights like this led us to change the tone of the conversation people were having about energy conservation.”

Added Ashton, “Our system, from the friendly design language of the Gateway to the tone of our user interface, is like a friendly doctor. We want to encourage good health and keep you focused on healthy behavior going forward. There’s no sense in yelling at you after you’ve eaten a bacon double cheeseburger. Let’s focus on the future.”

With the growth of smart meter installations in homes, people need to feel empowered to act positively upon the information delivered to them. Belkin’s own consumer insight research reveals people’s growing awareness of and desire to reduce energy consumption. In a December 2009 survey conducted by Horizon Research and commissioned by Belkin, 81 percent of respondents indicated they would “make sure to reduce their household use of electricity that month if they noticed that their electricity bill was too high the previous month.”

“The most successful smart meter implementations will be ones that drive compliance and encourage people to understand their energy use and feel motivated to conserve. Our strengths in understanding people’s needs and in user-centric design will help empower people to be smarter about how they consume,” continued Ashton. “We’re helping people make progress every day.”

Building off its expertise in home wireless networking, mobile accessories, and energy management products, Belkin aims to team with utility companies to bring these user-centric conservation experiences to its customers. “Given our knowledge in these areas, we really are experts in helping people connect to technology in meaningful ways,” stated Ashton.

Conserve Gateway joins its retail siblings, Conserve Insight™, Conserve Smart AV™, Conserve Valet™, Conserve Socket™, Conserve Switch™, and Conserve Surge, products that are all designed to help people easily save energy without altering their lifestyles.

AVAILABILITY

Currently available. Please contact Belkin Sales for information.

Conserve Gateway (F7C001)

• Ability to provision and manage a home area network (HAN) to enable the monitoring and control of in-home devices, appliances, and energy loads.
• Smart Energy Profile (SEP 1.0) certified ZigBee® network interface for communicating with smart meters deployed with utility advanced metering infrastructure (AMI).
• Wi-Fi/Ethernet network interface allows for communicating with cloud-based device management system through user’s home broadband router and provides an alternate channel for utilities to communicate with the gateway.
• Secure data communications across wired and wireless media and networking protocols.
• OTA software upgrades can allow application updates to be pushed to the device.
• External antenna for maximum ZigBee pairing range