EcoFactor, a California-based company, will begin installing its smart thermostats that the company says will help costumers reduce their energy usage and annual energy cost. EcoFactor teamed up with Oncor, a utilities company based in the Dallas area, to run its test-trial pilot in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, area that is intended to further validate their findings.
According to EcoFactor, its thermostats manage a home's heating and cooling system, and will automatically make adjustments in temperature based on weather conditions, owner’s preferences and schedules.
Owners can also review data collected, change temperatures, and make adjustments online while away from home using a laptop or smartphone.
The company says its smart thermostat system can make a home’s heating and cooling systems 20 percent to 30 percent more efficient.
The EcoFactor thermostats are connected to a wireless system within the home that uses info and data collected from “thousands of data points” that creates a “dynamic signature” of a home’s thermal characteristics and strategies to help the user reduce their energy use.
According to EcoFactor, the data points it uses are from “individual homes, local weather stations and numerous other geographic inputs."
"We spent years building a solution that will effectively reduce energy usage and automatically save homeowners money, without sacrificing comfort, control or convenience," said John Steinberg, CEO of EcoFactor.
The installation cost for the pilot is $19.95 which includes first 6 months of monitoring for free. After the free period, the pilot users will be charged $8.99 a month to use the EcoFactor service.