Real-time Web Growth Will Be M2M: Smart Meters

Much of the discussion of the real-time web has focused on content generated by humans, such as tweets.  But the bigger growth over the next decade is likely to come from m2m interactions.  One big source of data will be smart meters. For instance, the UK government recently unveiled a plan to equip every home with a smart meter by 2020.  The real-time electricity usage data from these meters can be used for better management of consumption by individuals, companies and utilities.  In addition to price, thanks to our portfolio company AMEE, those decisions can now also be based on the real-time carbon intensity of the UK grid.  It will be interesting to see how quickly smart metering takes off in the US.  Both Google with PowerMeter and Microsoft with Hohm are already building consumer facing services that can be fed with smart meter data.   At the beginning of this year, fewer than 5% of meters in the US were smart meters.  So there is room for some very fast growth over the next couple of years.