One of the more unfortunate consequences of our energy companies failing to invest in smarter and greener technology when it had the chance, is that now we have to do it all ourselves. And it’s certainly not the most fun in the world trying to tie together a grid inside your own home with so many competing companies in the space. Schneider Electric is pledging to offer a one-company-fixes-all solution with its Home Energy Management System, which it’s announcing at CES.
Schneider’s system is, more or less, all of the components necessary to manage your home’s energy needs. That includes a home battery, solar inverter, electrical panel, connected power outlets, smart switches and its own EV charger. The idea being that you can buy all of the bits at once and then manage all of your home’s power needs from a single app. That should, says the company, help reduce the cost, complexity and space requirements of buying these components separately.
If there’s a benefit to such a system, it’s that Schneider’s hardware will co-ordinate the sources of energy in your home to suit your needs. That’s especially important during a power outage, where for instance, you can set the system to only power the essentials to preserve energy. So, you can set it to run your fridge, freezer, water heater and HVAC, but nothing else when things get rough. You’ll also be able to set it to calculate when energy costs are at their lowest, for instance, in order to charge an EV from grid power.
There’s no word on price yet, but we can expect the components to make themselves available across the year.