Continuation of Energy discussion today

TechCrunch article about a company raising money for Open Source technology for Smart Homes. Interesting follow up to our energy discussion in class today. Table 2 - what does this do to the incentives across the stack? How does this effect the energy producers and utility companies? Is $8 million really enough of an investment to get this off the ground? Unclear on these question but thought the energy table would be able to direct further discussion stemming from this morning.