[October 01, 2015]

Earth Networks' WeatherBug App Now Empowering a Smart Consumer With Real-time Insights On How Weather Impacts Current Energy Usage & Costs

Earth Networks® today announced that its WeatherBug (News - Alert) mobile app is the first to integrate big weather data, connected thermostats, and utility meter data - a fundamentally different smart home approach -- to provide consumers with unmatched real-time analytics on how weather impacts their current energy usage in order to make smarter home energy efficiency and utility costs decisions.

Earth Networks operates the world's largest network of weather sensors, and its WeatherBug consumer users have grown to more than 20 million. From within the WeatherBug Home area of the mobile app, consumers can now connect to their preferred smart home services - including connected thermostat launch partners Honeywell (News - Alert) and Nest, and open smart home platform partner Samsung SmartThings, as well as utility data from Accelerated Innovations' MyMeter. Once connected, consumers will have access to predictive energy usage and costs, unmatched insights that empower consumers to control and optimize their energy efficiency and costs, while maintaining comfort and safety --- all from the palm of their hand.

"50 percent of a home's energy usage is impacted by the weather, but today's smart home technology is restricted to what's happening inside the home," said Bob Marshall, founder and chief executive officer, Earth Networks. "With our newest WeatherBug app release we are integrating our hyper-local weather network data with smart home sensors and publicly available home characteristics data to provide energy usage and predictive costs, unique insights not available before now. By offering consumers a hub for their home energy use, we are extending value beyond powering the smart home to enabling a smart consumer."

Earth Networks will continue to build on these unique consumer benefits by leveraging its extensive network of sensors and its signaling processing capabilities to offer new insight on and optimization of home energy efficiency and energy usage.

Marshall continued, "As more consumers connect their home devces and energy company's data within the WeatherBug Home area of our app, we will leverage our experience collecting massive amounts of data from sensors and unique signaling processing capabilities to not only inform consumers about how the current external weather conditions are impacting their energy usage, but to detect the health of the home's infrastructure, including HVAC, appliances, and more. We will then automatically optimize connected device operations for the weather and offer personalized suggestions through virtual home energy audits."

WeatherBug Home was built to become a consumer's smart home 'hub' that integrates weather data (Earth Networks' proprietary cloud processes 25 terabytes of real-time weather data every day) with the industry's most extensive ecosystem of smart home partners - ranging from thermostats, light bulbs, washer & dryers and hot water heaters, to utility smart meters. As a result, Earth Networks is positioned to deliver on the promise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the power of big data analytics by delivering a set of unique benefits:

• Consumer Benefits - Earth Networks' Internet of Things (IoT) approach unifies data from multiple sources into a single service, enabling consumers to monitor, control and optimize their energy usage from one single app. This unique analysis includes predictive energy usage and costs and the ability to optimize for the weather, the single biggest driver of home energy use.
• IoT Partner Benefits - Smart thermostat device manufacturers and other IoT smart home service partners are now able to deliver enhanced value to customers through unique insights into energy use and costs by partnering with WeatherBug Home.
• Utility Provider Benefits - WeatherBug Home's thermodynamic model approach enables significant energy efficiency savings and intelligent demand response through the optimization and automated control of HVAC systems, appliances and more. Utility partners get the benefit of greater reliability through improved energy efficiency and more consistent peak load reduction, as well as higher consumer engagement by integrating energy within our weather app.

The WeatherBug mobile app is available for download in the Apple App Store and the Google (News - Alert) Play Store.

About Earth Networks: Powering WeatherBug & WeatherBug Home

For 20 years, we have been Taking the Pulse (News - Alert) of the Planet® using the world's largest weather, lightning and greenhouse gas monitoring networks. Our sensors across the planet keep consumers, businesses, and governments informed, updated and alerted. Our popular WeatherBug® brand provides neighborhood-level weather, superior forecasts and advanced severe weather alerts to millions. Our WeatherBug Home offering taps big weather and connected home data for improved energy efficiency and comfort. Enterprises such as schools, airports, professional sports teams, utilities and government agencies rely on our early warning solutions to safeguard lives, prepare for weather events, and optimize operations. Know Before®.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151001005511/en/

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