Sami Kaislasuo, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Silicon Labs discusses how Matter 1.3 is shaping the future
Buildings are responsible for a significant amount of the United States’s energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. According to the NREL, they account for 70% of electricity use, 40% of overall energy consumption in the United States, and 30% of operational greenhouse gases—that’s a massive environmental footprint!
These statistics are worrisome, especially as our world aims to transition to a net-zero future. Our desire for increasingly sophisticated and convenient devices drives a constant need for more energy, leading to higher bills, but technology offers solutions to manage this consumption without sacrificing our modern lifestyles.
With the integration of IoT, energy consumption can be reduced across a variety of industries, from smart buildings to industrial IoT and even smart home energy management, helping us progress toward a more sustainable future.
Harnessing the power of IoT for smarter energy use
As we work towards a more sustainable future, it’s important to turn our attention towards energy management as an effective way to reduce overconsumption. This includes consistent monitoring and optimisation of energy usage patterns, identifying areas where energy can be saved, and integrating renewable sources of energy like solar into the mix.
All of these tasks can be labour-intensive and time-consuming if done manually, but the IoT streamlines and optimises them. Thanks to the new Matter 1.3 update, energy management—especially in the home and in buildings—now operates under the Matter standard and is even easier to manage.
Matter 1.3 opens up more devices for energy management
Most consumers today struggle to understand their energy usage but still have growing concerns about environmental impact. Matter’s newest 1.3 update will allow users to automate their energy management and have transparency in their energy insights.
With Matter 1.3, all devices on the connectivity Cloud can report actual and estimated measurements, including instantaneous power, voltage, current, and others, in real time, as well as its energy consumption or generation over time. Users can even control the rate, schedule, and quantity of electric vehicle (EV) charging from afar. This will allow homeowners and building managers alike to cut time on the manual process of consistent monitoring of energy and water systems.
Smart cities: How IoT is transforming urban energy systems
As the primary components of our cities, buildings significantly impact community-wide energy consumption. Integrating IoT into cityscapes is essential for addressing this collective usage and promoting global energy reductions. Retail buildings and office spaces commonly rely on one or more wired building automation systems (BAS) that control the core building functions, mainly spread across heating, air conditioning, and ventilation.
Integration of IoT can create smart building management systems that facilitate on-demand, local equipment control for greater energy efficiency. Building facility managers can use smart sub-meters to track consumption by usage (e.g., lighting, HVAC, pumps), by building structure (e.g., floors, wings, area, parking lots), or any other helpful criteria to provide data with segmented measurements to define building plans better and promote sustainability.
These always-on monitoring systems allow managers to address energy misuse immediately, reducing costs and increasing overall sustainability. Using IoT devices, facility managers can get detailed insights into active energy consumption by various building operations. These smart sensors can help determine the load signature of a building and the equipment responsible for higher energy consumption during peak demand times. IoT technology enables buildings with onsite renewable energy reserves or distributed energy resources (DER) to take operations “off the grid” when high-power consumption intersects with peak times.
Industrial IoT: Optimising output, minimising waste
With their high energy demands, industrial workplaces can greatly benefit from advanced energy management. Industrial IoT (IIoT) systems enable automated control and rapid responses to fluctuating energy needs and prices, offering both efficiency and cost savings.
For example, workplace airflow regulation is made easier with the IIoT. With help from the IoT, on-demand ventilation is possible in workplaces like mines or factories. Smart sensors can determine the best places to filter air and how much airflow is needed. Traditional systems ventilate the entire mine, including areas that don’t function, but the on-demand ventilation system can direct air only where and when it’s needed. This optimisation leads to much lower electricity use for mining companies.
Home energy management
Just like building management, submetering can be effectively applied to individual homes. Homeowners can receive real-time updates on their energy usage, including peak times, and ultimately save money by limiting their usage. Smart home devices can automate lighting, water, and heating and cooling systems. For example, sensors can detect when a light needs to be switched off or easily regulate indoor temperatures against weather patterns and user preferences.
Overnight EV charging in the home can often lead to a strain on the energy grid, leading to cost surges in certain areas. However, with IoT-powered energy management under Matter 1.3, systems will be able to consider cost surges to detect the best times to charge your EV and other battery-powered devices, creating a more sustainable— and cost-effective— way to manage energy in the home.
As governments push for improved energy efficiency, device makers are being asked to adopt data-sharing standards that allow devices like washing machines and thermostats to communicate with each other and the power grid, ultimately saving energy. This aligns with the industry’s broader goal of making home energy management more interoperable, seamless, and user-friendly.
Voltalis, a European energy management company, installs smart home energy management devices for heating and cooling appliances, allowing them to reduce consumption briefly when needed. Voltalis also partners with energy markets to address timely policies and regulations, creating grid stability and demand response.
Consumption levels are provided to homeowners through real-time data, reducing overall consumption and promoting sustainability. This promotes optimal EV charging loads—EVs can withstand periods of time without being charged or charged with limited current, but the network cannot support them and can crash if the load is too much higher than the production at a given time. Two-way control of consumption and production is crucial for an optimised grid, and with help from energy management systems like Voltalis, this is made possible.
Additionally, energy-smart appliances like washing machines, tumble dryers, washer-driers, and dishwashers, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems can optimise their energy efficiency with use cases like incentive-based power management that limits consumption by providing financial incentives for conservation of energy. Smart systems are able to track these consumption levels in real time, providing instantaneous information for both smart grid management and homeowners.
The path forward: Energy management for a sustainable future
Automated energy management systems empower users to regulate, reduce, and gain valuable insights into their energy consumption. This translates into lower energy bills while promoting a more sustainable future. As energy management becomes more accessible and IoT connectivity expands, these solutions are finding applications across diverse industries, extending beyond buildings and homes.
In the future, we can expect energy management to continue to be seamlessly integrated into civil engineering, playing a key role in planning sustainable urban environments. Silicon Labs is eager to follow advancements and is helping customers, designers, and manufacturers build safe, secure, connected devices that support sustainability goals.
Author: Sami Kaislasuo, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Silicon Labs
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