Heating, Air-conditioning & Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) has joined the Consortium for Energy Efficiency's (CEE) steering committee for the Lighting & Homes for Tomorrow connected homes competition.

CEE is organizing a connected home competition, Lighting & Homes for Tomorrow, in order to identify and reward connected home devices (including HVAC) that deliver a positive customer experience (with a focus on interoperability, reliability, and simplicity) while also yielding benefits to the grid. CEE is inviting entrants from three main categories: connected lighting, connected homes/systems, and connected home platforms/ecosystems (software systems).

As part of this effort, CEE is including industry players with relevant expertise and aligned interests. CEE has invited HARDI to join the steering committee, along with CEE members, the American Lighting Association, Continental Automated Building Association, UL and DOE/NREL.

The role of the steering committee is to develop and finalize key elements of the competition: the evaluation criteria, judging process, judging panel expertise and participants, entry recruitment activities and entry screening.

HARDI's soon-to-be released research findings on controls distribution prompted HARDI to participate in this committee.

HARDI's Emerging Technologies Council approved participation in the project, saying "it would provide additional visibility to our distributors and manufacturing members, and HARDI as a whole, with its commitment and contribution to providing quality energy efficient products to the connected home technology market."

The competition will take place next year. For more information, contact Sarah Jilbert at sjilbert@hardinet.org.