As the use of KNX technology is growing around the world, it is also making the world more sustainable. Amy Stoneham finds out how.
KNX is one of the fastest growing ecosystems in the smart home and buildings industry. A survey HiddenWires conducted back in 2021 showed that adoption of KNX technology in projects is increasing vastly around the world.
KNX simplifies automation, ensuring all devices and systems can communicate with each other in order to easily control a home or building. While the protocol is being adopted more and more, KNX as an organisation are now working with installers to use the technology to help make homes and buildings more sustainable.
News around the globe is increasingly filled with extreme weather conditions caused by global warming and climate change. More than ever, the human race is now being strongly encouraged to act upon these issues by making changes in their own lives to make a difference. One of the top actions we can take is to ensure our homes are more sustainable and energy efficient to help reduce climate change.
The scale of the challenge facing us as we try to move towards a more sustainable future is vast.
“According to the IEA (International Energy Agency), buildings account for nearly one-third of global final energy consumption and 55% of global electricity demand,” explains Casto Cañavate, marketing manager of KNX Association. “The last 25 years saw the growth of energy needs for buildings make up 60% of the total growth in global electricity consumption. As this increasing need for energy in buildings all around the world continues, it has become even more important to look beyond just efficiency of energy consumption within a building but also making them more sustainable.”
KNX is acting upon these challenges and encouraging home and building owners to use KNX technology to improve their sustainability. In the next five years, KNX wants to be seen as a technology that helps to build a sustainable world.
Casto continues: “This requires a change from passive (i.e., the use of double-glazed windows or replacing halogen bulbs to LEDs), to active (maximising energy efficiency in homes or buildings by using basic smart devices such as timers, thermostats, presence sensors to switch off the light or air conditioning/heating in a room when nobody is in there). Beyond that, we need to look at energy management, which is the proactive approach to plan, monitor and optimise all aspects of energy. We can do this by replacing fossil source or energy with renewable energy, generating our own energy, storing unused and excess energy generated, converting the energy into hot water, and more.”
KNX is constantly developing its technology to ensure it is helping the issue of sustainability. For example, with the new expansion of the open source KNX IoT, the KNX technology exponentially expands the possibilities to connect devices and solutions. With KNX IoTech products and solutions already available in the market, installers are now able to connect more devices into one ecosystem than ever before.
Moreover, KNX Secure is also something that has been readily available in the market for a while now. According to the KNX Association, with a portfolio of over 400 secure KNX Certified devices, it offers the biggest portfolio of secure products in the world.
While these aspects build a secure ecosystem to help make homes and buildings more sustainable, optimising energy consumption and energy management through KNX devices and technologies can help further.
“Energy management using KNX allows a system to supply uninterrupted energy according to the needs of users at any given time,” adds Casto. “This same system can also decide what is the best thing to do with the energy in the home or building, starting from its generation through to whether it should be consumed or stored, according to the key parameters of being efficient and preferring energy from renewable sources.”
KNX has a lot of experience in energy management applications. KNX can control heating production, as well as monitor air conditioning and heat pump units. KNX also provides individual room control of cooling or heating, one of the applications in which KNX has been very successful.
Furthermore, in recent years, the KNX system has been able to connect to metering and submetering, providing data for specific parts of the installation up to the overall energy consumption of the system. For load management, KNX can ensure that the level of the load stays between given limits. KNX can also be connected to single- and three-phase metres digital smart metres, with all the possibilities this brings. Many different types of loads can be integrated with a KNX system, such as hot water production, heat pump via a smart grid, and more.
More recently, KNX has been extended with new application domains in the arena of energy management that are expected to grow in the near future. Firstly, KNX can connect and prioritise the renewable energy sources into the smart home or building. It also monitors and controls energy for diminishing the use of fossil sources of energy when it is not really necessary to use. For example, instead of using fossil sources of energy to charge the battery of an electric vehicle at night, the system can delay the charging to the first hour in the morning when the photovoltaic panels are generating energy to ensure the energy used is renewable.
Additionally, energy storage can be monitored with bidirectional information flow to and from KNX. Charging stations can also be connected to KNX to indicate if the charging station is occupied or free, display the charging progress, set charging limits in terms of time or power, report errors, and communicate securely thanks to KNX Secure technology.
KNX can also help the grid to be smart when it cannot meet the energy demands of connected homes and buildings. Finally, it can convert the surplus of generated energy after all the demands have been met into hot water for later use.
Energy management devices already exist and are already promoting more sustainable practices for homes and buildings. As we have already highlighted, KNX is playing a huge part in this.
“For some years already, we have seen a new wave of energy management devices launched into the market, such as e-charging devices for electric vehicles, battery storage units for smart homes, smart metering devices to control the loads, and much more,” says Casto.
“In addition, we saw an increase in projects participating in the energy efficiency category celebrated at the KNX Awards in September this year,” he continues. “The winner of this category was a project of a smart residence in Mexico, which combined smart devices to automate functions, so it saves as much energy as possible in all facilities reaching a saving of up to 60% across the entire house.”
The project incorporated solar harvesting, which was used to generate electricity for all the needs in the house as well as using solar power to generate hot water. This is managed with logical functions and regulated using gas boilers and the circuit’s transfer to the electrical supplies (UPS and energy supplier).
As a whole-home automation project, lighting, audio, blinds, temperature control, air conditioning, etc were all integrated and automated. The weather station monitors energy harvesting performance, rain detection, and wind detection and subsequently controls the shutters and blinds to make it more efficient. Similarly, all outdoor lighting is regulated using scenes and time-dependent natural light and presence detection.
Three touch panels give the homeowners information and control for all main areas. Remote control is also available with SSL:WebServer and a custom app to allow monitoring of all systems.
Overall, KNX is the secure ecosystem which is helping to build a sustainable world through its growing adoption and innovation of technology.