Microsoft inks second deal for Hohm energy meter

The escalating battle between Microsoft and Google for dominance of the emerging smart meter sector took another turn this week after Microsoft signed a second deal with a utility, enabling its Hohm home energy management service to gather energy usage information directly from the electricity provider.

The deal, with XCel Energy, brings the service to another 3.4m electricity customers and mirrors similar moves from Google, which recently signed a series of deals with energy providers to provide energy usage data through its PowerMeter application.

Hohm is an online service that uses information gathered about typical household usage to make recommendations designed to curb users' power consumption.

The service gathers the information about a household, such as number of occupants, appliances, and other systems, and uses national and regional averages to estimate the energy usage in a home, before making recommendations to improve energy efficiency.

Hohm uses analytic algorithms from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Energy to help make its recommendations, but it is assisted by a social network of users, from which it learns more accurate recommendations. Users can also compare their energy usage to that of others in their area.

Microsoft has already signed a deal with Seattle City Light, enabling its customers to automatically upload their home energy data. That organisation serves the City of Seattle exclusively. However, all US residents can get access to Hohm by entering their data manually.