Tendril announced today a new collaboration with Google that will provide voice-activated energy information and notifications to utility customers via the Google Assistant and Google Home devices. Indiana Michigan Power (I&M), an American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) company, will be the first utility to work with Tendril and to offer this functionality to its customers. With this partnership, utilities like I&M will leverage Tendril’s vast amount of data on how consumers use energy to deliver rich insights and better manage energy in the home.

“Enhancing the experience of our customers through new technologies and services to manage their energy use is important and we consistently evaluate how I&M can effectively leverage emerging opportunities to better serve our customers in the way they want to be served,” said Dave Lucas, Vice President of Finance and Customer Experience, Indiana Michigan Power. “As voice-enabled devices continue to proliferate within the smart home, our focus is on how we can enhance the value that these devices can provide customers in their daily lives. Google and Tendril, market leaders in their respective spaces, were a natural choice to work with us.”

Parks Associates, a leading market research firm specializing in emerging consumer technology, has reported that by 2020, United States households will have more than 2.3 billion connected devices. One of the more prominent devices entering the household today are smart speakers. In fact, according to NPR and Edison Research, one in six Americans now has a smart speaker. The race is now on to spur further customer engagement with these devices by offering more helpful applications. More accessible energy information and notifications are important in creating value for customers.

The Tendril Platform will enable the delivery of energy insights through any device that supports the Google Assistant. Specifically, it will combine utility customer usage and billing information with thousands of data points on each home and their occupants to provide feedback about energy usage and notifications. In initial roll-outs, customers will be able to ask and get answers to a range of questions, such as:

• Ok, Google, what is my bill amount?
• Hey Google, how can I reduce my energy consumption?
• Ok Google, what are some tips to save energy?
• Hey Google, how is my home using energy?

This additional interaction with smart devices in the home builds on an existing effort between the two companies to better manage residential load using Nest thermostats.

“To go to market with such a compelling solution in partnership with two amazing market leaders - Google, one of the largest companies in the world, and AEP, one of the largest energy providers in the world - represents an incredible milestone for Tendril,” said Adrian Tuck, CEO, Tendril. “We’ve always strived to design and develop market-defining solutions that help energy providers engage with increasingly discerning consumers. Today marks another proof point that Tendril’s energy intelligence is unmatched in the industry.”

Watch this video to see the voice technology in action.

About Tendril

Tendril is transforming the residential energy market. Our data analytics on more than 123 million homes creates new business opportunities for any product or service provider connected to the home. Today, this includes electric and gas utilities, and energy retailers. Built over more than a decade, the Tendril Platform delivers real-time, ever-evolving data about the home and how people use energy in it. These rich insights help our customers improve customer acquisition, increase engagement and orchestrate home energy experiences. For more information, please visit www.tendrilinc.com and follow us on Twitter at @Tendril.

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