[Podcast] AI that makes your home smarter

Energy efficiency using AI

Are you sure you know how to save energy nowadays? Can the apps that control your lighting, heating, and car charging make decisions on their own? And is AI really working behind the scenes of our everyday choices?

In this episode of AI at Scale, Malgorzata Gorska talks to Scott Harden, SVP Connected Offers and Chief Technology Officer Home Solutions at Schneider Electric. What does the home of the future look like – one that not only consumes energy, but also produces it, analyses it, and feeds it back into the grid? All with the help of AI that’s… practically invisible?

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How artificial intelligence optimizes energy use in the background – with no effort on our part,
• Why smart home apps are often too complicated – and how to simplify them,
• Which smart devices are most used in households around the world,
• Whether it’s really worth charging your car at night – and how AI can help you decide.

For executives navigating the complexities of decarbonization and digitalization, this conversation offers a forward-looking perspective on the technologies redefining sustainability, operational flexibility, and value creation at the edge of the grid. Scott explains how artificial intelligence, electrification, and smart technologies are converging to transform residential energy management into a cornerstone of the energy transition. 

From grid-interactive homes that support utilities during peak demand to AI-driven optimization of EV charging, solar systems, and home energy management platforms, Scott visualizes why the future of energy is no longer confined to power plants and utilities how it’s being shaped by empowered prosumers. Moreover, he addresses the interoperability challenge, the role of software-defined systems, and why AI will soon become invisible yet indispensable in delivering resilience and energy efficiency. 

If you want to understand where the next wave of competitive advantage in energy will come from, this episode is a must-listen. 

Listen to the AI at Scale podcast 

Listen to Scott Harden: AI that makes your home smarter episode. Subscribe to the show on the preferred streaming platform (Apple Podcasts, Spotify) or play the episode on YouTube.

Transcript

Gosia Górska: Welcome everyone. This is the AI at Scale podcast by Schneider Electric. My name is Gosia Górska and I’m the host of this program. Today my guest today is Scott Harden. Scott is the SVP for Connected Offers and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Home Solutions at Schneider Electric. What we are discussing today is how AI is changing the way that we monitor and use energy. We will also cover what the top smart devices we are using at home are, and what some of the myths around energy saving are. Welcome, Scott. 

Scott Harden: Thank you very much, Gosia. Glad to be here. 

The importance of prosumers 

Gosia: Let’s start with your background, please. You are currently responsible for defining and leading the technology roadmap for all software applications and systems supporting the residential new energy landscape portfolio. Previously, you worked at Microsoft as Chief Technology Officer for worldwide energy and sustainability, and you also serve on the board of directors of the Smart Electric Power Alliance. You are a graduate of the University of Oklahoma with a degree in architecture and engineering. I feel like your career was telling the story of this new energy landscape because you were focused so much on the grid, you worked with utilities, you worked on energy software, and now with your current role, you are much closer to consumers, or even, shall we say, prosumers, because they are no longer only consuming the energy but also producing it. Are prosumers indeed this important element of the energy landscape today? 

Scott: Well, thank you for that question to start. It is kind of fascinating how my career has come full circle. I’ve reimagined myself a few times since starting as an architect. But the built environment has become something that is absolutely critical when it comes to energy worldwide. The role that I find myself in now is exciting and fascinating because the role of homeowners as part of the overall energy mix and the energy ecosystem has become absolutely critical. In my role right now, I’m covering really two different parts of the business. One, we have brought together our software organizations that are truly looking at connected platforms for the home. Two, I also lead our Connected Offers businesses, which include Wiser, it includes KNX, as well as what we do in terms of thermostats and home networking. Why is this so important? Globally, over half of homeowners now, more than ever, are very conscious of their energy consumption in the home. That’s for a variety of reasons: The cost of energy has gone up exponentially, as well as a proliferation of different systems such as solar and EV charging, and grid-connected elements that truly bring energy front of mind to the homeowners themselves. It’s quite fascinating to see how this is evolving now at a much more rapid pace than we have seen in the last 10 years, but it is actually following similar patterns to what we saw a decade ago in the built environment when it comes to commercial and industrial facilities. Now, we’re just seeing a lot of exciting developments happening in the home. 

Gosia: Yes, exactly. And among all these changes that you mentioned, which would you say is the biggest shift in how consumers think about energy? 

Scott: I think there’s an analogy we could use: when the internet became something that was no longer just referred to as a device-specific technology; it’s now ubiquitous. I think what we’re seeing happen in the home is that as people invest more and more in electric technologies through the purpose of electrification in their home, it’s becoming a much greater part of their internal vocabulary. Ten years ago, solar systems were more of a unique deployment made by people who were truly interested in tinkering with their own home. Now, if you look at Australia as an example, where 50% of the homes in Australia actually have rooftop solar, and it has incredible implications.

Monitoring of the energy 

Gosia: That’s really amazing. And I must say from my own experience, many of my friends and family members already have solar panels. Indeed, it changes their perception because now they can access all this information about how much energy they are actually producing, which wasn’t the case in the past. This is definitely something that has changed. You mentioned a little bit about monitoring the energy because this is also a shift that is happening. Why is it so important that now, with the exponential use of, for example, solar panels and wind turbines, we are getting this possibility to actually monitor better at the home level how the energy is being produced and used? 

Scott: Monitoring is actually key to this because essentially, it’s all about energy data. If you think about what is happening within the home with this proliferation of devices, you actually have to think of it as an optimization challenge. This includes optimization of individual elements, such as an EV charger; optimization of loads, such as large loads tied to water heating; and then optimization within the home as a system. For instance, you will have optimized solar that you would want to use at an optimum time to be able to perhaps charge a vehicle. So now you’re talking about system-to-system optimization. The third layer that I find to be the most exciting, and the direction that I think that we’re going to continue to go as an industry, is actually optimization of the home as part of the broader energy system or the grid. A lot of recent research and work has been done around grid-interactive technologies in the home, and you’d be surprised how many of these actually exist. You buy a new refrigerator today, and it very likely has a feature that it can be connected into some type of a utility program. Solar systems can be part of a utility program. What we’re seeing now is the opportunity perhaps to actually integrate these technologies into a single system that can be optimized with the grid itself. 

Adoption of smart tech 

Gosia: Yes, indeed. You have been in the software space for so many years. How fast would you say the adoption of the smart tech that is entering homes today is? 

Scott: You can certainly see that it is accelerating. The more important point is that we’re seeing convergence. A decade ago, a lot of the automation technologies that were emerging—things such as Alexa in the home—led toward the opportunity for people to provide some type of digital capability within their home for these different systems. But the convergence we are seeing now is how all of this comes together with a real emphasis on energy management as well. We refer to this as HEMS, or Home Energy Management Systems. I think it’s incredibly important that we think of these as a unified experience, where we’re not just talking about routines or scenes set with lighting, but actually, optimization: bringing together all these different systems and managing them very similar to how you would manage a commercial building. 

Gosia: That’s really impressive. I think people are getting more open to these kinds of applications. You actually ran an interesting research. Earlier this year, a study was published, prepared by Opinium, where Schneider Electric asked 13,000 homeowners about the usage of smart applications. I have the results with me: What are the top five smart devices we are using today at home? Do you remember number one? 

Scott: I don’t remember all of them, but I know that my home is full of them. 

Gosia: Yes, exactly. The first one was smart lighting. The next was voice assistants, like Google Home, Alexa, and so on. On the third place, we have the Smart Thermostat, then the Smart Energy Monitor, and the Smart Doorbell. Any surprises here for you? 

Scott: No, no surprises for me. I think what is going to be interesting is seeing, as these systems continue to proliferate, how important it will become to the homeowner to have them be interoperable. This is a challenge that we actually really need to solve for. You list all those different technologies, and I have many of them in my home. I also have many different apps on my phone that control these different things, and it really is becoming, I would say, overly complex. So, I believe there’s a need to create what would essentially be an organizing layer within your home, as you have all these different communicating and intelligent technologies, to help organize them and optimize how they actually work together. 

AI at home 

Gosia: I can imagine that this would be very helpful, especially as you said that we have more and more applications. I guess this is the point where we would start thinking about Artificial Intelligence (AI). After all, this is the podcast about AI. Once we start talking about smart applications, AI naturally comes into our minds. So what is the role of AI in enabling this intelligence at the home level? 

Scott: I think there’s going to be a multitude of potential opportunities for AI to be applied. And, using the analogy of the internet, I think that AI will ultimately just become so ubiquitous that we don’t even refer to it anymore. There are probably already examples within your home today where AI is embedded and being used by some of the systems—from a refrigerator that cools based on a certain routine, to the way your solar system actually optimizes the use of the sun at certain times of the day. I think we will see a greater trend where AI is actually spoken about less, and it’s going to be more about the outcomes. Where I see the greatest potential is the optimization problem: from individual systems, to the system of systems, and then to the grid. There will likely be no future where the home doesn’t become an essential part of the energy mix, and this will happen globally. You already see it happening in Australia today because of all the rooftop solar that exists. This also applies as EV chargers start to proliferate in the home, and we look at vehicle-to-grid type capabilities. I think we will see that there are going to be AI capabilities that will help with that optimization. It’ll happen behind the scenes. There will be some things, like what we’ve done in Wiser, where you can have an application that is AI-driven to help you reduce your energy bill. But there’s going to be more critical work that happens behind the scenes, where you essentially create a residential platform that optimizes for all of these different systems together. And that’s where I think there’s a real exciting opportunity for AI. 

Gosia: Yes, especially since it comes with some complexity because in some countries you have different energy tariffs, and your different applications at home are using energy at different levels. So there is so much room for optimization, and the benefit of AI naturally comes to our minds. However, going back to the research, one thing that really struck me is that knowledge about the benefits doesn’t seem to be paired with this wish to welcome AI at home. In the survey, we found that 44% of consumers would be unwilling to rely on AI to manage household tasks automatically. At the same time, 30% admit they are optimistic that AI can make our lives easier, and 33% believe that AI can help them manage their home more efficiently. As the Chief Technology Officer, do you see a way that technology can stand up to these expectations and also these mixed feelings about AI? 

Scott: Absolutely. I think the terminology we should start to think through more is really about talking about how these systems are software defined, and AI is just part of that software. Rather than trying to highlight a particular use case for how AI is applied to perhaps optimize a charger as it’s charging your vehicle overnight, it’s more about what that software is actually doing and the outcomes that it’s providing. In other words, is there a better time for me to be charging my car? Can you help make sure that I am taking advantage of the price signals that are coming from my local utility? Is there a better time of the day for my solar system to actually be absorbed into the battery of my car? I don’t know exactly when that’s going to happen, but it certainly could be dependent upon weather conditions and forecasts associated with this. All of this capability, I believe, will be happening behind the scenes. This is where I believe there’s a lot of potential benefits to be applied as we think about how we utilize AI technologies. 

Changes that we can do at the home level 

Gosia: Scott, you already mentioned a lot of simple changes that we can make at the home level in order to use less energy. Can you give me more examples? 

Scott: A great example I can provide is related to my own home. I have a fully electrified home. I have two heat pumps, all electric appliances including my water heater, and an EV charger. With the capabilities available today, I have the opportunity to not only have the situational awareness and visibility into all my energy consumption, but also the opportunity to perhaps optimize this together. My last house had a combination of different fuels, from gas to electric, and different types of appliances, and it was very difficult to look at how to optimize all of these as a system. But it’s different now because these are all electric appliances, and there is the opportunity to systematically organize them in ways where you’re following things such as price signals from the utility to the amount of solar energy that you’re producing on your roof. You can look at the whole system together now and actually look at efficiency, not only at the individual level. You can look across the entire system and make choices that are based on both internal data (energy monitoring) and external information that comes in as well. 

Myths about energy saving 

Gosia: And there is even the fact that you don’t know what you don’t know. Once you have this information, you can actually see some patterns and room for improvement. So, why don’t we jump into another great topic: the myths around energy savings? Based on the data you have for your own home and from Schneider products, are there still some myths that we should debunk around energy saving? 

Scott: The simple myths are topics like lighting. Everybody says, “Make sure to turn your lights off because you’re going to be consuming more energy”. Well, most lighting in a home is LED lights now anyway, and they’re extremely efficient. That’s not really the typical offender. But when you think of a home like mine that has fully electrified heating and air conditioning, that becomes the most significant load in the home. So now I have to be more consciously aware of how much energy these systems are actually using. I’m looking for software to help me with this, to be able to say, “Hey, here are some suggested changes you can make to optimize these things”. Another great example is electric vehicles. The utility that serves my home today actually has specific rate structures you can enroll in, so that if you charge your car at a particular time in the day, it will actually cost you less than if you did at another time of the day. I think there are pretty exciting opportunities because of these new technologies and the visibility you have, that you really can start to look at efficiency in a very different way. 

What’s next in the energy landscape ?

Gosia: That’s true. And I cannot stop myself from asking you: What are you cooking as Chief Technology Officer? So, what’s next in the energy landscape? 

Scott: What’s next? We’re really fascinated about what the emerging capabilities are going to be in the home. The residential segment for Schneider Electric is about 10% of our business, tracing back to what we have done with our brands such as Square D and others. As we see the world moving much more towards electrification, the residential segment is a big part of that. It is exciting not only for the potential to deliver technologies to help people optimize their energy use, be more resilient, and have more integrated systems, but what excites me the most is how homes actually become grid interactive and how the potential for homes to be part of the overall energy system. My friend and I, we are currently working on a white paper, and the question we really want to answer is: Where is the actual edge of the grid? It had typically always been understood that the edge of the grid stops at the meter. I don’t think that’s the case anymore because, as you mentioned, we have prosumers—people who are able to produce energy in their home and adjust how they consume energy at home. If you integrate that into the energy system, it becomes a flexibility resource at a much-needed time globally because electricity demand is rising. This is a good thing, as it is indicative of the fact that we are all electrifying. But I think the real exciting technology is the work we’re doing now, looking at how the home can become more grid interactive. 

Wrap up 

Gosia: That sounds like a great opportunity and a nice challenge for you. I guess your agenda will be busy in the coming months working on this. Thank you so much, Scott, for the conversation. Thank you for being with us today. 

Scott: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Great to talk about this. 

Gosia: Thank you everyone for listening and watching. This was the AI at Scale podcast. Stay tuned for next episodes. 

Like what you hear? 

• Visit our AI at Scale website to discover how do we transform energy management and industrial automation with artificial intelligence technologies to create more sustainable solutions.  
• Listen to the other episodes of the AI at Scale podcast. 

AI at Scale Schneider Electric podcast series continues!

The first Schneider Electric podcast dedicated only to artificial intelligence is available on all streaming platforms. The AI at Scale podcast invites AI practitioners and AI experts to share their experiences, insights, and AI success stories. Through casual conversations, the show provides answers to questions such as: How do I implement AI successfully and sustainably? How do I make a real impact with AI? The AI at Scale podcast features real AI solutions and innovations and offers a sneak peek into the future.