Smart Thermostat Field Assessment

This Emerging Technologies report documents the results of the Opower/Honeywell Smart Thermostat field assessment. The assessment was launched with two waves of recruitment in mid-to-late 2012. Under a recruit-and-deny research design, a retail intercept recruitment campaign resulted in 695 volunteer participants that were randomly assigned to a control group and 693 volunteers were randomly assigned to the treatment group. The assessment’s treatment consisted of a professionally-installed Honeywell programmable communicating thermostat, or smart thermostat, that connects to the internet through the customer’s home Wi-Fi network. The smart thermostat’s connectivity enables the customer to control their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system from any location using an iPhone or other smartphone that uses the Android operating system. The application, or app, running on the smartphone that enables remote HVAC control is provided by Opower. The Opower application features behavioral messaging designed to nudge the user towards making more efficient HVAC usage choices.