The “smart home” saves energy and lessens the impact on the environment. Most smart homes are focused on providing comfort and convenience features that are enhanced by electricity through such IoT (Internet of Things) capabilities as regulating temperature, turning on and off lights by voice actuation remotely, and ordering food replenishment as needed, automatically. The next generation smart building, residential and commercial, will have additional features, including connection to the smart grid electrical services.
The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) provide funding opportunity for technologies that allow energy-efficient buildings to interact with one another and the electric grid, to reduce emissions and improve grid flexibility. According to the DOE, EPRI and the department will be broadening its capability to evaluate and demonstrate the growing flexibility of smart, grid-interactive, efficient buildings, to serve the needs of building occupants and the grid while reducing energy consumption overall.
In March, DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy sought input from organizations that could “demonstrate and evaluate the capacity of energy-efficient buildings to interact with one another and the grid to provide greater degrees of demand flexibility at scale.” The DOE is making up to $65 million available through its Connected Communities funding opportunity announcement to expand the department’s network of grid-interactive efficient building communities nationwide. As an example, the Charlotte, N.C. office of Meritage Homes is working with EPRI to explore and demonstrate how to build energy efficient homes that are also grid friendly, based on a study by Duke Energy in collaboration with EPRI on understanding energy use patterns in zero ready and solar homes.
At last report, one-third of our carbon emissions comes from the electric power industry, one-third comes from buildings, and the final third comes from transportation. By improving the efficiency of buildings, especially in the residential sector, emissions can be reduced from two out of the three sectors.
About 51 percent of total energy use in buildings is for heating and cooling. Improving the efficiency of air conditioning and space heating in the smart home can lead to both energy and money savings. Meritage Homes reviewed a study by EPRI researchers to examine if thermal storage could be used in buildings as a lower cost means of providing grid stability compared to battery storage. Over the course of three years, EPRI discovered a number of technologies that could help reduce energy use in the residential market. Some of the unique technologies evaluated included Phase Change Materials in the building envelope, advanced construction technologies with high thermal mass walls, and high efficiency variable capacity heat pump systems, all of which have the potential to provide grid flexibility while reducing energy burden.
America’s 125 million homes and commercial buildings currently use almost 40% of U.S. energy, 74% of its electricity, and account for the great majority of peak electricity demand. Connected communities can leverage the latest advancements in building science, like state-of-the-art sensors, controls, and analytics, to manage and deploy grid-scale, energy efficient, and distributed energy resources more flexibly.
In 2019, energy use in buildings was 20.9 quadrillion BTUs with residential buildings consuming a little more than half that. Since 1973, natural gas use in buildings has marginally declined from 5.26 to 5.18 quadrillion BTUs, while electricity use has grown from 1.84 to 4.90 quadrillion BTUs.
A model for the connected community approach is Reynolds Landing in Hoover, Ala. As a recent report by Oak Ridge National Laboratory shows, Reynolds Landing uses 44% less energy than comparable all-electric communities and 34% less power demand during winter peak hours, leading to lower utility bills for families while in higher-functioning houses.
Obviously, as more of our economy relies on electricity, it must be generated with cleaner forms of energy. While the goal is decarbonization and to increase the amount of clean energy on the grid, we have to improve grid resilience, which requires new technology that allows utilities to better manage resources, but also technology that creates a more interactive grid for consumers.
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