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Smart heating and smart power control boost drive to Net Zero


Armin Anders, co-founder & VP business development, EnOcean, explains why wireless technologies can offer a solution to reducing the energy required to operate a building and in turn achieve success in the pursuit of sustainability


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t is well known that a large proportion of the world’s energy is consumed in buildings, to power lighting systems, room heating, and water heating. Historically, these have been powered through a combination of electricity, as


well as directly burning natural gas and mineral oil. In the push for Net Zero, energy for heating is expected to transition away from gas and oil towards electricity. This will have the effect of increasing the electricity demand imposed by buildings. Reducing the energy needed to operate buildings, for the health and comfort


of occupants, is one of many imperatives in the world’s pursuit of sustainability. Low-energy LED lighting reduces power demand by about an order of magnitude compared to traditional incandescent lamps. In the EU, legislation against inefficient lighting technologies included a ban on high-wattage incandescent lamps in 2009, followed by subsequent bans on lower wattages, that have encouraged widespread adoption of LED lamps in residential and commercial/industrial applications. Also ongoing is the move towards smarter buildings that are capable of autonomously managing heating and lighting for optimum comfort and energy efficiency. A great deal of progress can still be made here, although the presence of large quantities of legacy electrical infrastructure including wiring and control systems such as thermostats tends to slow the pace. Wireless technologies can offer a solution, allowing new controls to be installed with no new wires or significant decommissioning of old wiring. Bringing wireless technology together with energy harvesting to create self-powered controllers for


Above: Armin Anders, co-founder & VP business development, EnOcean


lighting and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems is facilitating the introduction of autonomous controls in smart buildings. No new wires are needed to provide power for the internal circuitry of the smart controllers, or to connect the controllers to smart lights or HVAC systems. And introducing these controllers has zero impact on the building’s overall energy demand since they are self-powered by ambient energy, using Peltier-type thermoelectric sources, solar cells, or kinetic energy conversion. EnOcean has led the development of energy-harvesting smart controllers and


now has a large installed base throughout commercial, industrial and residential buildings in Europe and worldwide. Individually, each of these units saves microwatts by powering internal circuitry from harvested energy. The energy saved by enabling smarter, autonomous control that eliminates reliance on occupants turning off lights when not needed, or turning heating settings down to reasonable levels is more significant. Autonomous lighting control, managed according to ambient light levels sensed using photoelectric detectors, permits additional valuable savings by adjusting the electrical lighting power to work with the ambient


“The energy saved by enabling smarter, autonomous control that eliminates reliance on occupants turning off lights when not needed, or turning heating settings down to reasonable levels is significant.”


daylight, thus ensuring lighting is continually optimised throughout the day. Smart controls are reckoned to save about 20% of HVAC energy and 8% of electricity consumed by buildings.


CO2 Impact


Now having a large installed base of EnOcean technology, the CO2 impact can be assessed, and it is significant. The company has developed a calculator, leveraging commonly used references, to quantify the savings in energy and, from this, the savings in generated CO2 achieved through units controlling HVAC and small electrical power in buildings. More than one million buildings are now installed worldwide with this technology, in smart homes and commercial buildings. Overall, the company is managing about 221 million square metres of smart-building floorspace. Based on official references for the energy demands of HVAC and small electrical power systems, these devices are currently saving 15% energy on average and by that more than 1.4 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, every year! And as more sensors are continuously installed, the annual savings will continue to increase. Alone, of course, this is not enough to fulfil our urgent need to limit emissions


and prevent damaging global temperature rise. But smart heating and smart power control are comparatively inexpensive measures with a significant contribution that should encourage us all to increase our efforts to keep making progress.


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