Reliant Creates Smart Energy Laboratory on Houston Street

Reliant will use 12 homes in Houston as a laboratory to evaluate a suite of smart energy tools and services, dubbed Reliant Innovation Avenue.

Over two years, families will provide feedback on a variety of smart energy solutions, which will inform Reliant's design of future services.

Each of the families, whose homes have provisioned advanced meters, has been provided with a customized set of products and services. These tools include current Reliant "e-Sense" offerings such as time-of-use price plans, home energy monitors, weekly usage summary emails, a mobile App, and iGoogle Gadget.

Other Reliant services provided to participants include a home energy check-up and filters. Additionally, one family elected Reliant's distributed solar leasing program, with Reliant's plan offering to buy-back excess distributed generation.

Additional solutions provided to participants include smart appliances and home automation.

Participants were not required to be Reliant customers; however, 11 of the families are served by Reliant at the participating home (the other has Reliant for another property but the included home is under contract to a competing REP).

The street chosen by Reliant was selected due to the diverse properties on it, including homes that are original designs built at the turn of the century, others that have been substantially renovated, and others that are newly built.

The project was implemented in conjunction with CenterPoint Energy and the City of Houston. Reliant received a Department of Energy grant to support the project.

Reliant said that it has more than 400,000 customers already on one of its e-Sense products and services.