Apilio attends Energy Startup Day

Last Week Philipp and Anna from Team Apilio attended the Energy Startup Day in Zurich (https://www.energy-startup-day.ch/). This is a yearly event where start-ups, established companies, investors and public institutions get together to learn about what everyone else is working on in the energy, cleantech and smart buildings landscape and discuss potential partnerships, investments and collaborations.

Energy saving measures can be incorporated into houses that are being built today, but how can we improve existing homes? Adding passive improvements, choosing your energy sources where possible, replacing inefficient equipment and controlling the energy usage are some ways to reduce energy consumption and keep a hold on your home running costs. 

We don’t need any one person to save energy perfectly, we just need to help everyone get a little better at it.

If you’re ready to take action, the first step is to gather your data by monitoring your system and finding out how much power you are currently using. You already do this as you pay a regular power bill that shows you exactly how much you spend. There are also a few IoT devices out there that can be installed and will offer a more detailed monitoring of your individual rooms and appliances. 

The next step is to analyse how your home operates and locate inefficiencies: maybe you want to avoid lights, TVs and fans being left on when nobody is enjoying them, or fine-tuning your heating depending on the temperature outside, or turning off the air-con automatically if a window is left open for more than 3 minutes or if the temperature difference between inside and outside is within a specific range.

Apilio allows people to use consumer-available smart devices to automate these kind of scenarios at their homes. This means they don’t need a huge investment or engineering expertise to install these smart devices and implement their ideal IoT automations. 

The key at this stage is to make people aware of the benefits and different solutions that IoT can offer, and help them find what they need for their homes. We feel there is a big opportunity here to spread the knowledge of all of these companies to the public and encourage them to take action. We are very lucky to be part of a very DIY community that loves learning, investigating and testing new things, and we are always welcoming more people to this (bright, safe and green) side!

It is also not just consumers that have to figure out how to set up their smart home devices. Companies also must see the incredible potential in IoT solutions today, and invest in their public APIs or consumer integrations with popular services in our ecosystem such as IFTTT or Google Assistant, to facilitate building custom automations that allow many different brands and devices to join forces. Even if they don’t provide a fully-fledged API interface, opening up to the Internet of Things will allow tinkering individuals to test their services and devices and help companies come up with new solutions and products.

It was fantastic to see so many like-minded peers at this event and connect with them, and we are looking forward to next year’s Energy Startup Day!