Wasted and inefficient energy usage costs money and harms the environment. Buildings account for nearly 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions. The Internet of Things (IoT) provides new solutions to make energy use smarter, cleaner, and more efficient across residential, commercial, and industrial sectors.
IoT connected sensors and data analytics create opportunities to better control energy in homes, buildings, and across cities. According to the folk at Blues IoT, the innovations of IoT energy solutions pave the way for large-scale reductions in energy waste, costs, and carbon emissions.
Monitoring Energy Use at the Device Level
Efficient operations begin with analyzing current usage patterns. Appliances, lighting, HVAC, machinery, and other equipment fitted with IoT sensors give detailed real-time energy usage data. The sensors track kilowatt usage, operating hours, temperature, humidity, and other factors. They transmit the data wirelessly to cloud-based analytics software. The dashboards analyze the usage patterns, identifying wasteful behaviors and opportunities for efficiency gains.
In commercial buildings, IoT-enabled circuit-level monitors and tracks how much power flows through each part of the electrical system. Facility managers utilize the energy use details to right-size systems, change settings, and influence employee behaviors. Older buildings often have HVAC and lighting that were designed for a larger headcount or different use case than current needs. The intelligent tracking highlights where to downsize to appropriately match demand. It also shows things like lights left on weekends or spikes from plugging in too many devices.
Optimizing for Peak Demand Times
Electricity rates often spike during peak demand hours when power grids experience heavy, concentrated loads. IoT sensors and predictive analytics forecast upcoming demand spikes that strain grid infrastructure. Building automation systems pre-cool spaces and throttle back non-essential power uses just ahead of predicted peaks. Smart peak shaving measures smooth out loads by briefly reducing electricity draw during crucial high-demand windows. The optimized operation saves money by limiting consumption during the highest pricing periods.
Peak load reduction helps utilities defer expensive investments in new power plants and grid infrastructure. As extreme weather events become more frequent with climate change, grid overload issues are likely to intensify in years ahead. Widespread IoT-enabled flexibility in building energy demand can help avoid outages and upgrade costs. Governments provide financial incentives to further drive adoption of intelligent peak shaving capabilities.
Enabling Automated Control of Energy Systems
Manual control of energy equipment often leads to overheating, over-cooling, and lighting left on well beyond working hours. IoT systems automate and optimize when devices turn on and off by tailoring usage precisely to building occupancy and daylight levels over time. Networks of low-cost IoT occupancy sensors provide detailed tracking of room usage rather than having heating, cooling and lighting based on a static schedule.
Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) run more efficiently using IoT automated temperature setpoints aligned to energy needs hour-by-hour. Connected thermostats continually adjust to reduce natural gas and electricity needs while keeping occupants comfortable. Automated smart lighting networks dim or turn off lights when ample natural sunlight enters rooms or spaces remain unoccupied. Light-level sensors activate lighting specifically in occupied work zones rather than illuminating an entire area. The IoT applications tune energy use to actual variable requirements rather than following fixed, human-programmed settings.
Kilowatt reductions from automation add up significantly over months and years of use across devices. And the automated systems improve comfort by keeping temperatures, lighting, and humidity within tight bands of occupancy needs rather than drifting into wasteful overheating or over-cooling when spaces sit empty.
Generating Clean Energy and Feeding It Back to the Grid
Rooftop solar panels convert sunlight into emissions-free renewable electricity. But cloud cover and grid demand fluctuations affect how much clean energy gets produced and fed into buildings. IoT solar inverters with embedded intelligence predict sub-hourly weather conditions using a combination of on-panel sensors and regional weather data. The systems forecast upcoming solar availability and respond to signals about real-time electricity demand on the grid.
The IoT-enabled forecasts and controls maximize solar output when sunlight and grid demand are highest. When behind-the-meter renewable generation exceeds a building’s internal load, extra energy gets routed back to the external grid. Building owners with solar sell excess power back to utility companies during peak periods at premium rates through net metering programs. The two-way energy transactions reduce peak demand on traditional fossil fuel generators.
The Road Ahead: IoT Systems Working Together
Currently, many IoT efficiency tools focus on controlling single devices or small building systems in isolation. The next leap will stitch these networks together to optimize energy across entire campuses, communities and cities. As more appliances, vehicles, thermostats, and solar inverters connect to cloud data networks, the machine learning algorithms will uncover new ways to shift loads, share resources, and consume less in harmony.
Buildings may coordinate to pre-cool spaces just before an electric vehicle charges in a public parking lot or a factory kicks into high production. Smart appliances may run at off-peak times, depending on renewable energy availability and grid demand forecasts. Neighborhoods could share solar generation and battery storage to power key services. Autonomous IoT systems will share weather and occupancy forecasts to drive cooperative savings.
The interoperability will unlock exponential improvements at a large scale, pushing societies further towards green, resilient and affordable energy futures. Cities like Singapore and Amsterdam have already begun tackling complex, urban-scale energy optimization using IoT innovations. And new solutions emerge daily as research expands the possibilities.
Conclusion
The connectivity and intelligence of IoT provides endless opportunities to conserve energy and slash emissions. Homes, buildings and communities now have the technology blueprint to track detailed usage patterns, enable automation and control, integrate renewable power, and eventually link everything together into a smart optimized grid.
While more work remains ahead in upgrading legacy building systems and adopting cutting-edge innovations, the promise of IoT points towards a future of affordable, clean energy abundance. Future IoT breakthroughs will open up greater reductions as smart grids mature. Organizations, governments and societies that embrace the clean energy evolution reap the environmental and economic rewards.