Samsung SmartThings is revolutionizing the smart home industry with carbon-intelligence features, helping millions of homeowners to be more carbon-aware and lower their emissions.
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THE CHALLENGE
SmartThings, Samsung’s global connected living app, allows its users to control their home appliances with ease. Within one smart home application, smart devices across the home can be connected, allowing owners to automate and streamline everyday home tasks to create a customized and efficient home environment.
These days, for many customers, sustainability becomes a priority when choosing their smart home products. Samsung aims to offer them the most environmentally friendly solution out there. Several developed features within SmartThings Energy aim to make appliances as energy-efficient as possible, for example through AI driven power-saving features. In addition to reducing the amount of energy that these devices consume, SmartThings features can significantly reduce emissions by shifting consumption to times when electricity is less carbon-intensive.
With more renewable energy sources being added to global grids, there is increasing variance in the carbon emissions of devices’ electricity consumption throughout the day. How can we make consumers aware of this and leverage the periods where energy is cleaner?
USER ENGAGEMENT
GLOBAL IMPACT
INNOVATION LEADER
SOLUTION
To enable smart home users to take control of their home’s emissions, Samsung partnered with Electricity Maps. The granular electricity data provided through Electricity Map’s all-in-one API could easily be integrated with SmartThings to allow users optimize their electricity usage and lower their carbon footprint.
The API delivers historical, real-time and forecasted data regarding carbon intensity and the source of electricity in the specific grid of a consumer at each hour of the day. Based on this 24/7 granular data, the new feature offers the possibility to use electricity in a carbon-intelligent way. This means that devices, such as Samsung’s robot vacuum Jet Bot, are charged when there is more renewable energy on the local grid, or the Samsung dishwasher starts running when the sun shines and the share of solar energy is higher. It is a key benefit that carbon-aware scheduling does not interfere with consumers’ daily lives, lowering their emissions without having to change their consumption habits.
In addition to smart electricity-optimization, SmartThings provides valuable data within the app for users, breaking down the emissions of a consumer’s home. These exciting insights increased user engagement in the application, while helping them understand their environmental impact. These and other sustainability features were even awarded by the Consumer Electronics Association (CES) with the 2024 Product Innovation Award.
Barry Holland
Director of Product & Business Development at SmartThings
Samsung SmartThings made it part of their mission to spread awareness about the carbon footprint of everyday consumption. Understanding the carbon intensity of electricity plays an important role in this. More and more people want to understand their emissions impact in order to make their lives and homes more sustainable, but this information is difficult to find. The SmartThings features powered by Electricity Maps are an important step to close this knowledge gap.
The new features not only educate consumers, but also motivate more sustainable decision-making, empowering them to save emissions with each carbon-intelligent home optimization. As Samsung is offering millions of users real environmental impact, having access to high-quality data backed by a scientific methodology was crucial to ensure reputability and withstand high levels of scrutiny.
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