The Evolution of Smart Thermostats to Whole Home Energy Intelligence
The advent of programmable thermostats back in the 1970’s ushered in a new era of home energy efficiency and cost management. Then, in the 2000’s, the first smart thermostats hit the market and further expanded the control owners could claim over their environment. But today, those early smart thermostats seem almost quaint compared to the finesse and power of modern Whole Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS).
Today, let’s talk about these systems. We’ll look at what they are, what they let you do, and why they’ve become indispensable for maintaining complex and luxury homes.
The Death of the Passive Electrical Panel
A traditional breaker box is silent and mostly passive. It can no more tell you what’s going on with your home’s energy grid than a crystal ball or a tarot deck. Worse still, it offers zero granular control over your energy draw (usage).
Smart thermostats helped draw this opaque curtain back a little. However, they only provide control over roughly 40% of a home’s energy. If true, intelligent control is the goal, then you need to be able to manage the remaining 60% as well–EVs, pools, appliances, electrical backup systems, etc.
Fortunately, HEMS throws open the curtains entirely. It provides homeowners a comprehensive view of where and how electricity is being used, plus sophisticated tools for managing that use. And it all starts by giving that old dummy breaker a bit of metaphorical grey matter.
Intelligent Circuit Control (The New "Brain")
If you think of your home’s electrical system as an entity unto itself, then HEMS smart panels and smart modules (such as those made by Savant) are the brain. This brain can do all sorts of tasks, including automatically adjusting your home’s energy usage based on variable criteria such as time of day, outdoor temperature, current room occupancy, and energy demand.
But something that makes this ‘brain’ special is that you can directly monitor it. All it takes to view and control your home is a few taps on a screen. So, if you want to check exactly how many watts the wine cellar is using, or the power draw of the guesthouse HVAC, or ‘flip’ an entire circuit on or off, with HEMS you can. Any time, and from anywhere in the world, so you can keep an eye on your home while you’re at work, or manage a second home or vacation property completely remotely.
The "Energy Trifecta": Solar, Battery Storage, and Load Management
One especially powerful feature of an HEMS is how it integrates with and controls solar and/or backup battery storage systems.
Specifically, HEMS provides an intelligent management layer that enables something known as ‘dynamic load shedding’. Dynamic load shedding ensures that, if you ever lose power, superfluous loads will be cut first to ensure the longest uptime possible for your essential systems. In other words, it’ll turn off the pool heater to keep the refrigerator running for a matter of days, not hours.
The EV Challenge and Load Balancing
Another critical service that HEMS provides is intelligent scheduling, or ‘throttling’, for EV charging. This means it actively monitors your home’s energy draw and adjusts the power sent to each charging vehicle accordingly, ensuring the main breaker never gets tripped. It’s the ideal solution for charging multiple EVs simultaneously, without requiring tens of thousands of dollars for dedicated Level 2 EV chargers and utility service upgrades.
Beating "Time-of-Use" Economics
Of course, stability isn’t the only reason you’d want to control your home’s energy. For most folks, this kind of technology is also expected to help keep utility costs under control. That’s where HEMS load shifting capabilities come into play. They will automatically shift where energy is being drawn from during the day to avoid peak pricing, using backup batteries during more expensive hours and recharging those batteries from utility power during off hours, when rates are low.
Infrastructure Over Gadgetry
As you can probably tell from the rest of this article, a HEMS is light-years more advanced than a simple smart thermostat. Those fall into the ‘gadget’ category of tech, while a HEMS goes much, much further. It’s a critical piece of home infrastructure, fully integrated and parallel to your standard electrical cables. And just like those cables, it needs to be laid in by an integration expert like Architechne before the studs are enclosed.
The Future-Proof Estate
Your home isn’t just a neutral bit of property. It’s yours. Your domain, where the people and things you love most are protected and allowed to flourish. With so much on the line, it’s important to think beyond the gadgets and gimmicks that too often get misinterpreted as a ‘smart home’. With our technology artisans in your corner, you can achieve an energy-independent sanctuary. Contact Architechne for an energy intelligence consultation today.
