Best Buy Will Offer Home Energy Tools & Audits

The next time you're in a Best Buy, you might be able to pick up a home energy monitor or other tool for saving electricity use at home. And if you're having a new electronic installed or repaired in your home by the Geek Squad, you'll be able to add on a home energy audit. Best Buy is moving into the energy efficiency realm, and helping more customers (hopefully) shrink their energy footprint.

Despite the disappointing disappearance of home energy management platforms like Google PowerMeter and Microsoft Hohm, Best Buy sees potential profit in selling home energy management products and services and will start the sales next month, reports a Star Tribune. Exactly which products will be on the shelves is apparently still a secret.

Three stores in Chicago, Houston and San Francisco will carry a stock of smart thermostats and outlets, energy use monitors, and other tools in a "Home Energy" section being rolled out in the stores.

"We believe that there's not a space that technology isn't going to affect in consumers' lives," CEO Brian Dunn said. "And energy management is right over the next horizon .... We see this as a logical extension of our core business." In fact, Dunn argued, true sustainability will only occur when companies such as Best Buy take the lead. It's not as if new tools and technologies aren't there -- in this past CES, the connected homewas a prominent theme among several major brands.

Read more: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/10/best-buy-to-offer-home-energy-tools-finally.php