“A house is just a place to put your stuff” — George Carlin
The rapidly-evolving and continuously-improving Internet of Things (IoT) has fostered the equally rapid evolution of electronic devices: smart gadgets that automate the management of your home.
It’s hard to argue against the benefits:
- The convenience of managing your appliances centrally, and even remotely.
- The flexibility and ease of adding new devices to your smart home network and upgrading existing ones. (“Getting more stuff”)
- The home security capabilities: Room occupancy and motion detectors, surveillance cameras, and smart locks can all help to increase safety. (“Keeping an eye on your stuff”)
- Improved energy efficiency leading to savings: Programmable thermostats, humidity sensors, motorized blinds, smart plugs, and their judicious use through scheduling of their functions can all play a part in bringing your consumption costs down.
- Environmental impact: The reduction of CO2 emissions resulting from energy savings affirms your commitment to clean energy and your motivation to make purchases by considering social and environmental factors.
But do all these smart devices on their own make your dwelling a truly “smart” home, or are they just “sweating the small stuff” so you don’t have to?
Aren’t we ignoring the elephant in the room—that big one over there named Energy—the one that’s wired into your smart meter and is the foundation of what’s powering your stuff?
Perhaps it’s time to tackle the big one in your energy ecosystem: Smart Energy.
Smart Energy is the process of using devices for energy efficiency. It focuses on powerful, sustainable renewable energy sources that promote greater eco-friendliness while driving down costs.
Smart Energy:
- Is clean and decentralized
- Is renewable, sustainable and eco-friendly
- Gives you the power to take charge of your energy
- Helps you save money
With the ever-increasing number of distributed energy resources (DERs), such as solar and wind energy and stationary batteries, the new energy grid involves folks taking charge of DERs in more proactive, cooperative, and responsible ways.
Perhaps not universally known—but gaining massive amounts of attention and spurring technological development and advancement—is that the huge battery in your electric vehicle (EV) can be used to power your home.
Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) is a concept that uses two-way power flow to provide electricity to your home during utility grid blackouts. You can also leverage this energy source to avoid consuming power from the grid during peak hours (peak shaving), during which many utilities charge increased rates.
The Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) concept optimizes the way we use and produce electricity by turning electric cars into mobile “power plants” when they are parked. Where your DER meets all requirements and where permitted, you can feed this electricity back into the grid and receive some form of compensation from the power utility.
So why has there been a lack of true Smart Energy appliances until now?
Consider that:
- Our cars (electric or otherwise) run on direct current (DC).
- Our homes and the power grid are powered by alternating current (AC).
Energy generation devices like solar panels, and storage devices like stationary batteries, are DC technologies. This DC power must be converted to AC in order to be of any use in our homes.
You may be thinking: “Uh-oh! Better buy some conversion stuff!” Not necessarily.
Smart Energy appliances have not existed in the residential space because there hasn’t been a product that could efficiently convert AC to DC in a home-friendly form factor. The device would also need to be affordable, neat, compact, and safe for consumer use.
The technology exists, but only in the industrial world—huge, messy, and potentially dangerous for consumer use, requiring integration and wiring reminiscent of an episode of McGyver. These devices can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
dcbel’s incredible breakthrough in power electronics (PUC5) changed all that. Now you can safely manage your car, solar panels, stationary battery and home energy consumption in the same efficient way you manage the smart device add-ons in your home. PUC5 technology is the award-winning Bidirectional AC/DC technology behind dcbel™, the revolutionary intelligent home EV supercharger, blackout power provider, and solar charger.
dcbel™ is a Smart Home Energy appliance that sits at the core of your home energy ecosystem. This all-in-one home unit generates, manages, shares and stores energy so you can power your life on your terms. Using its proprietary Orchestrate OS™, dcbel™ can learn your energy needs and adapt to your lifestyle, download new functionality, and integrate with your existing smart home devices.
Think of dcbel™ as your in-house energy expert, performing complex calculations in real-time and unlocking advanced energy management and control. This expert-level energy management can translate into considerable financial savings and CO2 reduction.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), over 80% of EV charging is done at home. Depending on your range requirements and frequency of EV usage, this can represent a sizable portion of your total home energy consumption. Indiscriminate consumption and lack of proper energy management can make this an unnecessarily expensive proposition.
What are the benefits of having dcbel™ manage your home energy?
- You can avoid peak tariff hours by charging via solar power. A robust MPPT Solar Inverter also lets you power your home with the unlimited power of the sun while enjoying double the power of a standard single-purpose solar inverter.
- dcbel™ integrates with stationary batteries. This lets you store excess solar energy for use at opportune times, like during a blackout or periods of the day when electricity rates are high, all without the need for an extra inverter.
- Blackout power enables you to use your EV’s massive battery to sail through multi-day utility grid outages.
- dcbel™’s mobile app lets you control your energy ecosystem remotely in real-time—from scheduling charging times to monitoring your backup power storage.
- By integrating your solar power system and your EV’s two-way power flow with dcbel™, you have the potential to reduce your utility bill to zero, or even have your provider credit you! An increasing number of utility companies now support net metering, offering feed-in tariffs where customers can inject the excess electricity they generate back into the power grid and get paid for it.
A truly Smart Home begins with Smart Energy. Using dcbel™ for your Smart Energy management needs shows that you know your stuff!
