Heating empty rooms is the most expensive habit in the house
In a country that heats with electricity and pays spot prices, presence is an energy input — not a nice-to-have. Automations already know what to do; they have been missing a reliable answer to who is home.
Heating empty rooms is the most expensive habit in the house
Norwegian homes run on electricity, and a large share of that load is heat. When the tariff is spot-priced by the hour, every empty room left warm is money leaving the meter — quietly, all winter.
What the energy crisis made obvious
During the high-price winter of 2021/22, Norwegian households cut electricity use by roughly 11% compared with a weather-adjusted baseline — a fast, nationwide response once the price signal landed (research on residential demand under spot contracts). The same body of work found a harder truth: the average home barely shifted load hour to hour. Households that did respond meaningfully were the ones with automation — smart EV charging, controlled heating, systems that acted without someone watching the price app.
Price alone is a weak remote control. Presence is a stronger one. If the home does not know whether anyone is actually there, the best thermostat schedule in the world is still guessing.
Presence as the missing energy input
Motion sensors lose you when you sit still. Phone presence stops at the front door and fails when the phone is left behind. Room-by-room radar works, but only if you install it room by room. Stillsense turns the Wi-Fi already in the wall into whole-home presence and motion sensing — so heating can ease off in empty spaces and return before you do, without a camera, a wearable, or a box in every corner.
We do not claim a Stillsense-measured kilowatt-hour saving. The research above describes how Norwegian households behave under spot prices, not a result from our product. What we do claim is the input those automations have lacked: a dependable, local answer to is anyone home?
In a spot-price country, that question is not a lifestyle feature. It is the difference between heating people and heating furniture.
The ~11% reduction and automation findings cite published research on Norwegian residential demand during the 2021/22 energy crisis (e.g. analyses of spot-price contracts and household flexibility), not Stillsense-measured results.