Smart buildings and energy-efficient design

Smart technology is reinventing how humans interact with buildings, personally and professionally. In our personal lives, smart home energy efficiency devices automatically turn lights on or off and manage our HVAC systems. In our workplaces, the IoT has unleashed massive gains in warehouse efficiency, commercial lighting customization, HVAC optimization, and beyond.

Intelligent IoT systems offer control, convenience, and efficiency in buildings. This article examines how methodical embedded design enables energy efficiency in smart building IoT devices.

Smart building device optimization

While some IoT devices may hard-wire to a power source, such as a doorbell camera or smart garage door opener, many devices rely exclusively on battery power. Devices like smart window sensors, smart temperature sensors, and occupancy sensors utilize highly efficient microcontrollers and sensors to maintain low power consumption. Paired with optimized power modes, sleep states, and minimal idle power consumption, specialized low-power hardware can extend the battery life of wireless sensors used in a smart building design, reducing maintenance costs and providing service for longer periods.

Energy-efficient communication and connectivity

Smart building IoT devices rely on seamless connectivity and efficient communication to enable critical functions like data sharing and centralized control. Power-efficient communication is vital to minimize the energy consumed by wired and wireless communication. Low-power wireless protocols such as Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) are commonly used in smart building applications to ensure optimal power conservation at a device level.

How to make energy-efficient buildings with embedded systems

Power efficiency and sustainable energy sources are the two pillars of smart building design and technology. These are realized through energy harvesting and optimizing energy consumption, including in power-hungry HVAC systems.

Energy harvesting in smart building design

Energy harvesting and storage systems like solar panels, kinetic energy harvesters, and battery banks can be controlled by smart building technologies. For example, wireless light switches can harvest energy from user interactions and ambient light to eliminate the need for batteries or maintenance. Additionally, smart light switches can detect the presence of individuals in a room and turn off the lights if the space is vacant. In the case of this smart light switch, a methodically designed energy harvest system and energy management system can optimize the device’s consumption and the power usage of the system it controls.

Smart building real-time monitoring and control

Real-time monitoring of power consumption plays a prominent role in smart buildings. Embedded systems that enable energy monitoring often consist of current sensors that monitor historical and real-time demand. These systems, including smart plugs and power strips, can monitor the power consumption of many devices and, if needed, limit the power supplied to them.

In commercial settings, industrial equipment often has integrated power management systems that can monitor power consumption, start-and-stop power supply, and even automatically start the machine during off-hours to limit energy costs. These integrated power management systems connect with the occupied building’s energy management systems to maximize efficiency.

Power efficiency is paramount in smart energy management systems that oversee energy distribution, optimization, and load balancing throughout a smart building. In highly complex buildings, smart energy management systems may provide power to hundreds of machines, several HVAC systems, and lighting systems. To intelligently optimize a building’s overall energy consumption, these smart energy management systems can be complex networks of embedded and central power management systems.

HVAC systems optimization

HVAC systems are often the most power-consuming portion of a building’s energy consumption. Power-efficient embedded systems in HVAC infrastructures enable precise temperature control, predictive use algorithms, energy optimization, occupancy detection, energy storage, and energy reclamation.

For example, a building may integrate power-efficient occupancy sensors and environmental sensors that can adjust temperature settings based on human occupancy, lighting demand, machine use, ambient conditions such as sunlight, and even user preferences. Not only are these systems highly reactive to their inputs, but they can also utilize predictive algorithms that anticipate changes in demand. Domestically, smart thermostats achieve similar efficiency-minded results in smart homes by optimizing run-time, accounting for building occupancy, and providing the user with real-time data.

Embedded systems and smart building design

In energy-efficient building technologies, embedded designs play a critical role in ensuring the functionality and sustainability of these intelligent systems. Minimized power consumption can be achieved at a device level by selecting low-power components that increase battery life and improve the user experience. Real-time monitoring and control of devices, lighting and electrical systems, and HVAC infrastructure are imperative to optimizing overall building efficiency, all controlled by precise embedded systems. Ultimately, power efficiency is not just a design consideration in smart energy buildings—it’s a prerequisite for the success and viability of smart building IoT technology.

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