Page 59 - Green Builder March-April 2020 Issue
P. 59
www.greenbuildermedia.com/internet-of-things-smart-cities
SMART CITIES
Environmental Insurgence
Here are three exciting technological developments coming for green builders
out of the San Francisco Bay Area.
BY TERRY BEAUBOIS The companies that are working together to create and promote in
ED BY THE GREEN BUILDING MOVEMENT , many this standard include Amazon, Apple, Google and the Zigbee Alliance.
advances and improvements are coming in the near The Zigbee Alliance includes IKEA, Samsung SmartThings, Philips
future. These will the design and construction of homes Lighting (now Signify), Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo,
and buildings that will signicantly improve the built Schneider Electric, Silicon Labs, Somfy and Wulian.
environment for all. Here are three technologies to con- The New Home Connectivity concept is that by building upon the
L sider in your green building projects. popular and widespread Internet Protocol (IP) standard, this project
will enable communication across a wider variety of smart home
1. NEW HOME CONNECTIVITY devices, mobile apps and cloud services. The project will “make it
One of the most important developments underway is the announce- easier for device manufacturers to build devices that are compatible
ment of “Project Connected Home over IP.” This eort is to “develop with smart home and voice services,” such as:
and promote the adoption of a new, standard to increase compat- Amazon Alexa
ibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental Apple’s Siri
design tenet.” Google Assistant
Any others that join in
Safety switch. SPAN.io’s Introducing this new standard will facilitate the integration of
electrical panel can be Smart Home elements during the planning, design and construction
controlled from a phases, rather than only applying them as add-ons after construc-
smartphone app that tion. This new standard will also increase the choice of products for
allows the homeowner to a project and reduce dealing with a combination of incompatible
access information about devices. This will also allow homeowners a wider range of possible
energy usage. devices to be integrated into their home projects.
Progress will be reported on the Project Connected Home over IP
website at www.connectedhomeip.com.
2. THE NEW HOME ELECTRICAL PANEL
Briey mentioned in a previous article, I had the opportunity to visit
the SPAN.io San Francisco headquarters and see the SPAN electri-
cal panel in person. SPAN promises to deliver a new level of energy
automation in the home.
The SPAN panel provides all the safety features of a standard
home electrical panel but with added functionality. It also has been
designed with the aesthetics of a product or device for the modern
home.
The concept includes the home electrical panel becoming the cen-
ter for connected power in your home. It can be controlled from a
convenient smartphone app that allows the homeowner to access
information about energy usage and control the panel remotely.
Installation of the SPAN panel is the same as installing a traditional
COURTESY OF SPAN.IO most-standard breakers. SPAN is designed to function as a regular
electrical panel and can be done by any certied electrician, using
electrical panel, and more easily accommodates connection to solar
www.greenbuildermedia.com March/April 2020 GREEN BUILDER 57
57-58 GB 0320 Smart Cities.indd 57 4/8/20 3:15 PM
