Currant, a startup devoted to creating smart products that reduce energy consumption, today announced its newest smart product — the Currant Smart Wall Outlet. The AI-powered, in-wall smart outlet analyzes power usage and creates personalized, easy-to-implement suggestions for consumers, contractors, business owners and real estate managers to automatically power off devices and appliances, cutting excess electricity usage and helping to save money on electric bills.
Currant’s Smart Wall Outlet will be available in a 15-amp version for homes and a 20-amp outlet designed for the commercial market. Both the home and commercial models can be controlled by the Currant App, Amazon Alexa or Google Home.
In addition to Smart Wall Outlets, Currant also announced that it has added a number of powerful new features to its WiFi outlets. Available January 8, these features will include the ability to lock the outlet so it cannot be turned on or off except through the app, which is valued by people who want to prevent things like a WiFi network from cutting out in the event someone accidentally turns it off, or business owners who want to shut off power to specific outlets or devices and not enable them to be turned back on from the outlet itself. In addition to the ability to lock the outlets, Currant will offer customized alerts that notify people when their rules take effect and when devices are using certain levels of power.
The new Smart Wall Outlet is designed to replace traditional outlets with duplex tamper-resistant receptacles that can be easily installed in commercial businesses and new construction as well as consumers’ existing homes. Each in-wall unit analyzes real-time electricity usage, displaying it in graphs that break down energy consumption and cost by hour, day, month or year. Customers can use the Currant App to monitor anything plugged into the outlet, effectively controlling power running through the outlet to ensure that they’re fully in control of all their devices and appliances, whether they’re down the street or across the country.
Currant Outlets run on both WiFi and Bluetooth. According to the company, the Currant Smart Wall Outlets will work seamlessly with existing Currant Smart Outlets, creating a Bluetooth Mesh Network throughout the building that can be used to control any outlet within range, enabling control in areas where a WiFi network is weak or unavailable. In addition, when several Currant Outlets are used together, the outlets can prioritize which communication protocol to use so only a subset of outlets are using WiFi.
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