In the United Kingdom, heating the house is much more of a concern rather than cooling it and just like anywhere else in the world, not a lot of people care about ugly thermostats. In the age of Internet of things, Google has made this device a lot cooler. It bought Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in January and closed the deal the following month.
Homeowners and businesses in the UK will have a dose of better-looking thermostats as Nest enters the market, its first market outside of the United States and Canada. The Nest Learning Thermostat sells for £179 as is or £249 with installation. The sticker price is roughly $300 to $415 using current exchange rates.
For those who may not be familiar, the Learning Thermostat is a clever device that can help homeowners save some money. It basically makes use of sensors to determine if a space is being heated or cooled efficiently. The thermostat, designed by Nest CEO and iPod father Tony Faddell, communicates with one's smartphone to give homeowners an idea about their energy consumption and suggest ways how they can save some money by tweaking their heater or air conditioning settings.
Nest took a while to launch the device in the UK for a number of reasons.
"The one we have in the US and Canada won't work for the UK because there's a different problem to solve. The issue isn't that you leave the heat or AC on all day. It's that you barely have any control over your heat. Or your bill," the company states in its blog.
"Most UK heating systems don't even have thermostats. So the actual temperature or your comfort never enters into the equation. In order to warm up the house, you have to keep walking back and forth to the programmer, manually turning on the heat in quick bursts hoping you get it right. There's also no way to track how much heat you're using, so balancing comfort and energy savings is guesswork," Nest added.
In order to make things work, Nest had to create Heat Link to address the different voltage used in its new market as well as make it fit for gas heating systems. The Heat Link controls the boiler and serves as bridge to the Learning Thermostat.
The product is also not as easy to install in the UK. The company said that a professional installer will take about an hour to set up everything to make sure the Wi-Fi network, Nest Thermostat and Heat Link are all working in sync. Nest estimates savings on energy to be as much as £353 annually.
Details of where the Nest Learning Thermostat can be purchased and where professional installers are located can be seen on the company's website.
As Google sets up another "nest" in the UK, its plan of gathering more information how users make use of technology and energy, takes a good step forward. Surely, Nest's landing in the UK market will hatch new money streams for the search engine company.
