Building electrification has emerged as a key lever for reducing carbon emissions. Building owners and operators have long considered how emerging technology can improve energy efficiency. Yet, they still have to consider trade-offs between their sustainability and day-to-day operational goals, such as cost, control, and occupant experience.
One approach to reconciling these aspirational goals with practical needs is building automation. New hardware integrated into the guts of a building can now be controlled by central software systems that more efficiently utilize energy. “Automation has a big impact on the quality of a building. If you have smarts in a building, you can save 30% to 60% of the energy simply by managing it better and knowing what is going on,” says Jim Baldwin, CEO of Domatic (Cohort 9).
Domatic is taking a novel approach to helping buildings automate, giving building owners more capabilities and control over reducing their energy consumption. They focus on automating a building’s low-voltage power distribution, which encompasses any cabling below 50 volts and 100 watts. “Electrical code calls low-voltage power as being safe from fire or shock hazards. This has become interesting in the last 10 years because many fixtures [such as lights or fans] have reduced power requirements due to LEDs and DC Motors,” Baldwin explains.
Domatic has created the PowerHub, a device with ten 100-watt low voltage ports that sits behind the wall. This device has embedded software that ascribes an IP address and controls the state of every attachment. This means that a building operator can get a global view of every device linked to one or multiple PowerHubs and manage usage from a single interface.
Domatic’s software offers an additional layer of flexibility: it can control attachments even over 100 watts of power. This makes it easy for building operators to manage all of a building’s control and sensor points, such as HVAC and heat-pumps, in the same interface. “We can now write software that can do a much better job of controlling things and bring higher efficiency to the building,” Baldwin explains. “We can read temperature, humidity, occupancy throughout the building for an overall view of comfort.”