With technology vendors from small device startups to Microsoft and Google moving into the home energy management (HEM) market, and with governments and utilities investing billions of dollars into smart grid and smart meter deployments, sales of HEM systems will grow rapidly over the next several years. Offering energy information displays (EIDs) and other energy management technology will be a key aspect of smart grid initiatives for utilities, which will become the prime distribution channels for these systems, according to a recent report from Pike Research.

“The global installed base of smart meters will reach into the hundreds of millions in the next five years,” says senior analyst Bob Gohn. “Forward-thinking utilities around the world are carefully making plans for ways that consumers can use the new capabilities offered by smart meters, and the smart grid customer experience inevitably includes a strong focus on home energy management.”

While there are dozens of EID vendors in the marketplace today, only a few have shipped significant quantities of devices so far. Nevertheless, consumer interest in technology offering more information about, and more control over, energy usage is high. According to a consumer survey conducted by Pike Research, over half of respondents were very or extremely interested in having a device in their home to monitor and adjust their energy usage.

That means that the global market for EIDs will grow from today’s low levels to millions of units shipped per year by 2012. In 2015, Pike Research forecasts that almost 5 million in-home devices will ship globally, mostly to U.S. and European homes. The cleantech market intelligence firm foresees rapid continued growth in subsequent years as well: by 2015, there will be over 11.1 million users of web dashboards worldwide, plus more than 2.6 million users of energy management applications on mobile devices. In all, there will be 28.1 million users of home energy management systems worldwide by 2015.

Pike Research’s report, “Home Energy Management,” offers an in-depth look at the global market for energy information displays including in-home display devices, web dashboards, and mobile energy management applications. It analyzes the drivers of supply and demand in the market, explores the principal technology issues, profiles the offerings and strategies of the leading vendors, and presents a forecast of the global market through 2015.