Nest, a Google owned intelligent home electronics start-up, on Wednesday, launched its Learning Thermostat in the U.K, two years after its US launch in 2012.
The thermostat’s UK rollout comes just three months after Google acquired Nest for £1.9 billion.
Nest claims the Wi-Fi enabled device will help consumers cut down their home energy bills by up to 29 percent. People can use the Nest thermostat to turn down the heat in their homes automatically when they are away and control it from mobile phones.
Erik Charlton, vice president for business at Nest Labs, announcing the launch wrote “This Nest Thermostat is an almost entirely new Nest Thermostat. 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 thermostat’s ‘Auto-Schedule’ settings keeps track of consumers’ habits and settings for “a few days” and then “continually adapts” by turning on and off at the required time to lower heating and cooling. Similarly ‘Auto-Away’ settings with the built-in activity sensors, adjusts the house temperature while the consumers are away.
The thermostat communicates with users’ smartphone and provides them information about their energy usage. The device also suggests ways how users can save some money by making changes to their heater or air conditioning settings.
Nest has partnered with utility provider Npower in the UK to make the thermostat available to its six million customers. The Learning thermostat will be available for £179, while a professional installation will cost around £249.
