What is a Home and Business Area Network (HAN)?

Starting on January 15th, 2013, Pacific Gas & Electric Company will provide our customers with the ability to wirelessly connect compatible devices to their SmartMeters™ and view information about their energy and power consumption in near real-time. This SmartMeter™-enabled technology is called Home and Business Area Networking. With a near real-time look into your energy use, you can gain new insight into how your actions directly affect changes in your home or business overall energy consumption. Knowledge is power: better visibility into your energy can help you manage and reduce what you use and potentially lower your bill.

PG&E will provide the ability for interested customers to connect a compatible, ZigBee Smart Energy Profile (SEP) device to their electric SmartMeter™ to obtain their near real time energy usage information. Device manufacturers are making a range of devices that can use or display this information to customers in various ways, allowing customers to see, monitor, and/or control their energy usage.

In addition to showing you how much electricity your home or business uses in near real-time, your Home and Business Area Network device also can reveal:

• The rate at which your home uses electricity.
• Your historical real-time energy use – helping you evaluate what events cause spikes in your consumption.

Imagine if you could identify the biggest electricity draws on your home, take this information, and immediately react to it. It could help you to lower your energy use as well as reducing the money you spend on your bill each month.