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THE SMART THERMOSTAT Nest, which was bought by Google earlier this year for €3.2 billion, will be arriving in Ireland later this month as part of its European expansion.
Both the Nest thermostat and Protect (a smart smoke and carbon monoxide alarm) will be made available to people in Ireland, Belgium, France and the Netherlands later this month, after being initially available in the US, Canada and the UK.
Nest says that in preparing for the launch, it has customised both the products – like recording local actors for the voice of the Nest Protect alarm – and is partnering with energy companies in each country.
Nest’s products learns what way you heat your house so it automatically adjusts the temperature in your house, claiming to save up to 20% in heating bills.
The company said that the product has been installed in more than 120 countries around the world and has saved an estimated two billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy.
It didn’t reveal how much either product would cost, saying that it will be announced later this month as well. Nest’s smart thermostat costs £179 (€222) in the UK so it’s likely it will cost a similar amount when it arrives here.
Although Nest will have competition in the form of Dundalk-based Climote, which was named National Champion in the 2014/2015 European Business Awards last week.
It also allows users to control their home heating straight from their smartphone, and recently landed a major contract with energy giant ScottishPower, one of the so-called ‘Big Six’ energy suppliers in the UK.
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Does it have ‘I’m feeling lucky’ setting?
Google everywhere. Not sure if we need gigantic companies involved in so many aspect of our life’s.
I think the horse has already bolted out of that door.
Between smart phones alone there’s an incredible amount of data available to people to see how person lives their life. On the other side, there’s a raft of smart technologies out there for the home that are incredibly cheap; if you’re into that kind of thing.
Its really depressing that we have such badly insulated and air porous houses and apartments that we need to add tech that turns heating systems on 15mins before getting home such is the massive heat loss.
@Dave Fingleton…….and people are still building that way. It’s entirely possible to build better, and easy too. I quoted to build such for a scheme lately and I the feedback I got back (by email) was they (the developer) saw ‘no merit in the marketplace to build beyond minimum compliance’. Doesn’t that just tell you all ?
Very interesting, John. We don’t learn from past mistakes in this country, do we?? I totally agree with how easy it would be to build better houses. I am a builder, once offs, extensions / renovations. Nearly finished a 1600 sq’ house in Co.Laois. I use an insulated concrete form system. Underfloor heating off an air to water heat pump, Heat recovery ventilation, very close attention paid to airtightness. The projected heating cost for the house is 82 euro per year. All for not much more than 100 p/sq’ build cost. It can be done…
Even better if your partner is home and you’re out, and you turn the heat down on your smartphone and they freeze their tail off and wonder why for ages before seeing that you remotely changed the heating. Works once, anyways LOL
heatmiser is far cheaper and no monthly subscription, if you are a competent DIYer and able to configure port forwarding on your router. Good iphone app too. http://www.heatmiser.com/index.php/thermostats/wifi-thermostat-series
Google integration is where the Nest could win though. Imagine a heating system that knows you are on your way home (thanks to Google tracking in your phone) and turns on the heating automatically when you 15 minutes from the house. That’s the future of the Nest – true integration that is fully automated, not reliant on connecting via an app or browser.
Also, 95% of the people that will want this sort of technology won’t want to learn how to play with port forwarding on the router tbh. They’ll want it to be ultra straightforward.
Nest doesnt require any monthly subscription??
The tado does this already. Best would only be playing catch up if they added it .
Nowhere the same amount of features as nest though
Also nest isn’t a monthly subscription
Sean care to expand on what features you think the Tado or heatmiser is missing? neither of which are subscription.
NESt does not support muiti zones liek the Heatmiser does. An as such it really is not suitabel for any modern heatign system installed in Ireland in th epast 15 years. you would need to buy a new NEST for each zone.
Heatmiser supports multizones,
Great product, have been using the thermostat a lot and i have to admit its pretty amazing.
The product reviews say it all.
Plus there is no data collected for google… which people seem to think.
Interesting, are you using this in Ireland?
The nest thermostat looks cool. I like the idea of smart homes and appliances but I wonder how much it will cost to install… The nest smoke alarm was less impressive when first released. They had to recall it when they realised that the waving gesture that disables it while the customer is doing a grill/fry is actually very similar to the frantic wave for help they might make as their body burns to a crisp… It has been tweaked since (gesture control removed – http://www.cnet.com/news/nest-protect-smoke-detector-gets-an-upgrade-still-no-gesture-control/)
Will it turn off the immersion?
Imagine if a company like google collected data about every minor detail of everyone’s life…. Wait a minute…
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