Hungry Machines
Hungry Machines is a home energy management platform that automatically shifts HVAC, EV charging, home battery, and water heater usage to cheaper time-of-use electricity hours. Each night, the system generates an optimized operating plan based on usage patterns, weather forecasts, and utility rate schedules. The platform offers both a Home Assistant integration for existing smart home setups and a standalone Home Hub device.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Clean Technology
- Energy
- Hardware
- Internet of Things
- Software Only
Funding
Founders
Product
Problem
Many US households are on time-of-use electricity rates where prices vary throughout the day, yet most homeowners lack the time and expertise to manually shift their energy consumption to cheaper hours. As a result, these households often pay more on time-of-use plans than they would on flat-rate plans, leaving potential savings on the table.
Solution
Hungry Machines provides a home energy management platform that connects to existing appliances and automatically schedules them to run during the cheapest electricity hours. Each night, the system analyzes energy usage patterns, local weather forecasts, and utility rate schedules to build an optimized daily plan for HVAC, EV chargers, home batteries, and water heaters. The platform preserves user comfort by respecting configurable comfort bands while shifting consumption to off-peak periods. Users can connect through a Home Assistant integration that requires no additional hardware, or use the Home Hub, a pre-built device that coordinates all major appliances from a single box. Every optimization decision is transparent and can be overridden at any time. The thermal model that learns a home's behavior remains scoped to the individual account and is never pooled across users.
Target Audience
Primary customers are homeowners on time-of-use electricity rates who have smart home setups (particularly Home Assistant users) or want a dedicated device to automate energy scheduling for their HVAC, EV charger, battery, and water heater.
Features
- Nightly optimization engine that generates device schedules based on usage patterns, weather forecasts, and utility time-of-use rate data
- Home Assistant integration available as a HACS package that works with existing setups without new hardware
- Home Hub device that coordinates HVAC, water heater, EV charger, and battery scheduling from a single pre-built unit
- User-defined comfort bands that balance bill savings with household comfort preferences
- Transparent recommendations showing why specific schedules are proposed, with full override capability
- Per-account thermal modeling that learns individual home behavior without pooling data across users
- Home Hub Plus in development with panel-sensing capabilities to track major circuits and further improve savings