ElectrIQ Power and Mattamy Homes partner in new Arizona smart housing development

ElectrIQ Power, an energy storage company developing hardware and software solutions, is piloting its energy storage technology in a new Arizona housing development with Mattamy Homes, North America’s largest privately-owned homebuilder.

Mattamy Homes will install ElectrIQ Power’s IQ System, an all-in-one home energy management and storage solution, in a model home located in the Haven community in Phoenix, Arizona. ElectrIQ will act as “brains of the smart home” energy storage solution, the company said.

The IQ System optimizes connected renewable energy, batteries, Electric Vehicle charger and smart devices, through real-time analysis of utility rates, weather forecasts, historical energy usage and other factors to manage backup power and electric bills.

“The goal of our newly-formed relationship with ElectrIQ Power is to learn how the storage technology can be used to deliver innovative and sustainable homes that can aid us in building communities of the future,” said Subhi Alsayed, Vice President of Sustainable Development at Mattamy Homes.

“Our goal is to be able to build homes that can mitigate demand charges, provide grid services and are more resilient to grid outages,” Alsayed added.

The software provided by ElectrIQ will also include an IoT platform for interoperability between the IQ System and some of the most popular smart home appliances including thermostats, refrigerators, hot water heaters, smart plugs and EV chargers.

These integrations will allow the IQ System to understand and optimize power usage at the appliance-level, thereby unlocking additional homeowner savings.

Partnering with Ecobee

Mattamy Homes is also partnering with home automation company Ecobee to create smart homes of the future.

Starting in March 2018, every new Mattamy home built across North America – some 7,000 homes a year – will include the voice-enabled ecobee4 smart thermostat. The ecobee4 comes with the built-in Amazon Alexa Voice Service, meaning a number of other household functions can be automated as well.

The partnership will enable Mattamy to build homes and communities that are compatible with smart grids. In the future, Mattamy intends to work with Ecobee to further advance the smart home space including the enhanced use of data.