Empowering people by building a smarter home

Imagine the clock scanning your meeting calendar and adjusting your morning alarm, blinds rolling up for the morning sunshine, the coffee machine turning on at the right time, intruder alarm switches on as you are ready to leave and the electric car outside your house charged overnight ready to take you to office. Later when you return the smart lock scan your retina to open the door lock. The oven controlled by smart device has made the dinner ready without the fuss. It’s nearly bedtime but the washing machine starts to take benefit of off-peak hours. 

Welcome to the ease of living in the Connected Home – that broadly links and include everything. It provides a comfortable and safe home environment made of smart devices, application and cloud services. With the new age technologies and Internet of Things, all the smart home devices can be connected to the communication network to take command, communicate and send information. It may sound complicated, but sooner it will a reality for every household to invest and reap its benefits. 

Finding Values in the Connected Home 

With Covid-19 the world has faced its greatest challenge. It has transformed many of our lives and we have started living in new normal. Our homes have converted into office place and the fusion of home office is much better. The change in scene has left us spend more time at home. We are renovating our place and upgrading to new smart product to have a touchless experience while working from home.  

Pandemic might have slowed down our busy lives but not the innovation. The latest digital-age technology promises user with indisputable benefits derived from smart devices. Aside convenience, the user biggest long-term benefit is energy efficiency, cost and better quality of life. 

Role of Smart Metering in the Smart Home 

The Smart Metering and Home Area Network (HAN) is instrumental to accomplish Smart Home. It provides a reliable, sustainable and cost-effective proposition for users empowering them to have a real time view of energy consumption, control the energy usage and help achieving the cleaner environment.  

• Benefitting from 'time-of-use' tariffs 

The time of use smart tariff encourage the users to opt for more energy consumption when it is available cheaply during the off-peak periods. Smart tariff gives opportunity and flexibility to the user to change their behaviour, the way users use the energy and reduce their bills. It is also benefitting the network operators to have more efficient and balanced grid by appropriately addressing the supply and demand. Smart Meters plays an important role by collecting the energy information on half-hourly basis and enable energy supplier to offer Time of Use smart tariff.  

• Smart Appliances 

The Smart Metering enables users to securely integrate other Smart appliances with Smart Meters and help programme home appliances to operate automatically to take an advantage of pricing information and cheaper tariffs. We can imagine that washing machine or a dishwasher to be automatically operate during the time when the energy is cheaper and sourced through a renewable energy, which is not only a cost beneficial proposition for the users but also contribute towards the cleaner environment. 

Integrating Smart Home with Solar panels 

Further, adding solar panels to house roof ensures optimal level of energy at home which is eco-friendly. With smart device house owner can programme to firstly use solar power energy and buy or sell surplus energy from or to the supplier basis household demand. By storing the extra energy, the household can turn into micro supplier can even sell energy to their neighbourhood. 

Smart Electric Vehicle Charging

With the growing number of electric vehicles, majority of users are opting for a Smart EV charging at home making it more suitable for them. The Smart charging enables the users to manage the energy consumption and charge their cars during the off-peak times, when the rates are low, and energy is green. The integration of Smart Meters and Smart charging altogether enhance user experience by leveraging the dynamic pricing and time-of-use smart tariffs. Furthermore, Smart Meters and Home Area Network can facilitate the load control, HAN-connected auxiliary load control switches (HCALCS) that allows electric vehicles chargers to be controlled independently connected via the Home Area Network, instead of connecting with electricity meter, giving a greater connected smarter experience. 

Conclusion 

The connected home trends are promising, and the smart home tech industry is on a tremendous upward trajectory. Within a decade many of us will live in smart homes promising to save our resources and would able to manage the household tasks with ease. 

Bhupender Tuteja, HCL Technologies UK Ltd, is seasoned professional with 20+ years of experience across Telecom, Energy & Utilities, Media, Smart Cities & IT industry with core expertise in Digital Transformation, IT Transformation, Product Development, Program Management, Digital enabling of business, IT Strategy Planning, Account Management, Client Relationship management, Operations & Transition Management, Demand & Partner Management. 

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