One of the highlights of the November 2024 release of Matter 1.4 is how far
it extends support for home energy management systems (HEMS). Matter 1.3
introduced energy reporting, which enables energy management use cases for
large appliances and electrical supply equipment, but Matter 1.4 takes
things a step further, by adding more device types, increasing autonomy,
making energy management more flexible and enabling home-wide coordination
of energy use.
A Growing Trend
Seeing the Connectivity Standards Alliance make energy savings a priority in
the latest release of Matter should come as no surprise, since it reflects
growing consumer demand for energy efficiency, lower energy bills and
carbon reduction.
A recent report
by the US-based IoT market research firm, Parks Associates, says that nearly
50% of all US internet households now own a core smart home device, and
better home energy management is one of the top reasons why people install
these kinds of devices. That’s because people like knowing how much energy
each device or appliance consumes, and they like using that knowledge to
make better-informed decisions about how to save energy and lower their
energy bills.
Matter 1.4 addresses this trend by making it even easier for people to
reduce their energy consumption, by adding automation and making the energy
grid more flexible – all without having to make a series of manual
adjustments or program a bunch of settings.
Experience intelligent energy management over Matter. Watch this new demo
video .
More Devices, More Autonomy
For example, Matter 1.4 adds support for solar panels and hybrid
solar/battery systems. This enables battery systems that can discharge
energy back into the home or the grid, creating what the Connectivity
Standards Alliance terms "virtual power plants." Heat pumps can forecast
consumption and adjust usages during peak demand or shift energy use to
off-peak times, and water heaters are better able to accommodate changes in
routines, such as when guests are staying over, and electric vehicle supply
equipment (EVSE) can use charging preferences to optimize convenience and
cost. Add it all up, and you have a smarter, more automated approach to
energy management in the home.
The NXP/GEO Demo at CES
We demonstrated Matter-enabled autonomous coordination of home energy
management at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas,
where our theme was "Brighter Lives." We’re also excited to be
bringing this experience to the NXP Booth at Embedded World.
CES Home Energy Management Demonstration.
The demo showcased a next-generation HEMS system, called SeeZero, designed
by geo (Green Energy Options, Ltd.) in the UK. SeeZero is the world’s first
mass-market, Matter-enabled in-home display to use NXP’s silicon technology
to connect with Zigbee smart meters as well as Wi-Fi and Thread devices to
bring Matter energy management to life.
A video of the demo is available video .
The SeeZero unifies all a home’s energy smart appliances (ESAs) to allow
them to securely communicate their future energy demands to a HEMS, which
then coordinates them all automatically.
The demo’s virtual home is equipped with a smart meter, a water heater, a
washing machine and dryer, solar panels, a SeeZero thermostat, a home
battery and an EV charger. The energy consumption of all these ESAs can be
managed and coordinated, without homeowner intervention. Matter can
communicate with all the ESAs, even if they’re from different manufacturers.
Consumers with solar and battery installations can take advantage of excess
energy generation, turning ESAs on when the power would otherwise flow back
to the grid. EV charging can be scheduled to take place at night, using
stored energy, or postponed until midday, after morning clouds are
expected to clear. Excess solar power can be directed to the water heater
in the morning, instead of going to the grid, and later in the day the water
heater can switch off and energy can be diverted to the HVAC to prepare the
home for the evening.
Taken on a wider scale, autonomously coordinated HEMS installations like
the one in the demo can be used to balance out the grid, especially during
extreme events like heat waves. Utilities can alert homeowners to the need
for conservation, and the home can automatically reduce consumption to meet
the need. HVAC systems can turn air conditioning from high to medium
settings or turn off EV chargers to conserve energy. Once the extreme event
has passed and the utility gives the go-ahead, the house can turn itself
back on, automatically. The result is a flattening out of demand and supply
and a reduction in the need for standby fossil-fuel-powered generators.
Made Possible by NXP
At the heart of the geo SeeZero is the NXP i.MX RT1060 Crossover
MCU (which runs an Arm Cortex-M7 core and offers 1 MB of RAM), a K32W0x
wireless MCU (which supports Matter, Zigbee, Thread and Bluetooth Low
Energy 5.0), and an 88W8801 2.4 GHz single-band 1x1 Wi-Fi solution (for
connection to devices that run Wi-Fi).
Neal Kondel demonstrates NXP’s latest energy system development platforms at CES.
The ability to deliver a demo that supports Matter 1.4 only months after it
was officially released is a testament to how closely NXP works with the
Connectivity Standards Alliance to support Matter, and to the breadth of
our offerings for energy, connectivity, security, processing and software.
NXP has one of the industry’s broadest Matter portfolios, with scalable,
flexible and secure platforms that let device manufacturers like Geo focus
on product innovation and fast time to market. As this is a hot topic,
we’ll be continuing the discussion in a new videos series in the months to
come. For now, discover how we can help you innovate with Matter.
