Energy prices have risen steadily over the years. Amid this, businesses and homeowners are looking for solutions that can help them cut skyrocketing monthly electricity and water bills. Smart energy management solutions, enabled with the Internet of Things and the data that connected devices generate, can help in this regard
Energy prices have risen steadily over the years. Amid this, businesses and homeowners are looking for solutions that can help them cut skyrocketing monthly electricity and water bills. Smart energy management solutions, enabled with the Internet of Things and the data that connected devices generate, can help in this regard.
With energy whole prices at a high, suppliers are under pressure to increase their prices as well. This has resulted in a proportionate rise in electricity and water bills that businesses and homeowners are faced with. To put things into perspective, electricity prices for consumers between the second half of 2014 and the second half of 2015 increased by 26.8 percent in Latvia, 15.1 percent in Belgium and 8.4 percent in the United Kingdom, according to the European Commission. How to manage energy consumption, therefore, has become critical for enterprise and home users.
Against this backdrop, the Internet of Things and the various devices associated with it have become an effective tool for analyzing and managing energy usage. As such, they are increasingly embraced by enterprise and home users alike. “What I can say is that the residential market is embracing the digitalization of in home devices, such as smart thermostats, smart plugs, smart lighting, all which can now be controlled by voice,” said Arthur Jouannic, Principal Analyst at
Delta-ee. “The US market has been the pioneer in developing solutions, at least for the residential market. Now we see these devices invading Europe as well, and we expect Asia and Australia to follow in the coming years. The reason is partly due to speed of innovation and also the need for demand-side response in some states of the U.S., where companies like Nest started to develop solutions.”
“Using IoT technology and big data on energy and water management is no doubt the future trend. It’s happening right now,” said Jason Liao, Senior Product Manager at
Billion Electric.
According to Liao, the difference that IoT makes is the data and insights generated by the devices. “Without IoT, there’s no data to understand the reason of energy waste. We can only see the result and passively look for solutions, which can’t solve the root problems,” he said, adding that thanks to IoT, people now have more data with which to manage energy usage more effectively. “For instance, all companies or enterprises sign contract capacity with utility companies, and the company will get fined for exceeding the capacity. Therefore, knowing the real-time electricity consumption is crucial to understand the power usage behavior to avoid getting fined.
Billion’s smart energy management solution (SEMS) consists of smart meters, smart gateways, an environmental sensor, wired and wireless communication technologies and a cloud-based computing system. Users can remotely monitor the operation status of electrical appliances and overview the instant power consumption data on the cloud-based computing system via any browser and cell phone app.
“Our SEMS cloud system can analyze the historical data into readable charts and data table to further improve the energy efficiency. Meanwhile, the sensory data such as temperature and humidity can be transmitted to the frontend smart Wi-Fi infrared remote control to adjust the temperature of air-conditioning,” Liao said. “The system will send out an alarm notification to users’ phone for any abnormal electricity event and automatically shut down if the situation is series to prevent the accident such as electric fire and current mechanical damage.”
While SEMS is mostly for commercial and enterprise applications, Liao said use cases extend beyond those sectors. “Billion SEMS is suitable for smart city applications such as smart energy, smart building, smart agriculture, smart architecture, and renewable energy, which can not only save the cost of manpower and equipment management but achieve the goal of decreasing energy consumption and CO2 emission,” he said.
According to him, smart energy solutions like SEMS are more in demand in places where energy cost is more significant. “In the areas where the electricity bill is relatively high including Europe, North America, using IoT can help them to decrease the electricity cost in the long-term,” he said.