Apple’s smart house did not get a single head sign during WWDC Keynote, but it turns out that there are interesting developments to come on the domestic application around energy.
In a video published on the Apple developer’s website this week, the company has described its new Energykit framework, which allows developers to integrate Apple Home’s energy data in iOS 26 and iPados 26 to reduce or move the use of electricity of their devices to prioritize cleaner and / or less costly energy. Thus, for example, your thermostat can reduce its energy consumption when prices are higher, and your VE can generate a charging schedule based on expected prices to save money.
Apple’s documentation indicates that Energykit is currently designed to operate with EV chargers and smart thermostat applications. Today, several individual products offer these features. Ecobee and Google Nest thermostats can move their energy consumption depending on factors such as availability and clean energy rates, and work with demand response programs, and most EV chargers have applications that can create timetables according to energy data.
Although Energykit is designed to provide secure data to Apple Home in the manufacturer’s application, you can see the potential here to one day manage all these devices and functions inside Apple Home. It could be to lay the foundations of Apple Home to possibly become an energy management system (HEMS): a system that can monitor, control and optimize your energy consumption.
We already see this implementation in Smart Home platforms like Samsung SmartThings with its AI energy mode, Homey (belonging to LG) and others. Apple has a lot of catch-up to be done, because its platform does not currently take care of the energy monitoring of connected devices.
This could lay the foundations for Apple Home to eventually become a domestic energy management system
It is probably a question of knowing why Energykit focuses on developers to integrate Apple Home data into their own applications, because Apple Home does not support EV chargers or energy monitoring of thermostats. However, with Apple’s deep involvement in the Smart Home standard, it is possible that the management of these devices can come to Apple Home.
The material recently added a support for most of the main types of devices as well as high-intensity devices such as heat pumps and electric water heaters, which could now be more easily integrated into the apple house via material. The standard also supports battery energy storage systems and solar power devices such as inverters, panels and solar / battery hybrid systems. When you connect the points, it seems that it could be a next natural step for the ambitions of Apple’s smart house.
