Tomorrow’s homes will be smarter than today’s. It won’t be because they have electric curtains.

Recently, we stumbled on Onzo, a company that has been turning the ideas in Nudge about feedback and energy use into slick, innovative, energy-saving products. As the designer of in-home energy displays and smart energy meters, the London-based start-up has earned the unofficial title “the iPod of Cleantech.”

Feedback displays are potentially just the beginning of high-tech domicile choice architecture. In a guest post, Onzo founder and CEO Joel Hagan discusses automated technology in houses, how smart meters bode well for the future, and why a truly “smart home” is still far, far away.

By Joel Hagan

There’s a lot of talk about automating homes these days. Programmable broadband and home networks that heat, cool, and light rooms without any switch-flipping; refrigerators that can detect when their contents are running low and re-order online. This kind of automated gadgetry, intended to make our lives easier and nudge us to live greener and eat better, can make home builders, environmentalists, and high-tech whizzes starry-eyed about the possibility of “smart homes” popping up in neighborhoods soon.

Not so fast.

Continue reading the post here.

Tags: environment, feedback