To notably reduce the energy consumption of the home, and therefore the cost of the electricity bill, the renovation project involves interventions on the following aspects:
A. heating/cooling system
B. lighting system
C. drives and motorised systems
D. command devices
The energy protection and management devices (ReStart and miniature circuit breakers) used in the domestic enclosure, the socket-outlets, plates and ON/OFF push-buttons for electric loads are all the same as those in the low energy efficiency system.
HEATING SYSTEM: SMART CLIMATE CONTROL The renovation project envisages independent climate management in each room of the home; that's the reason for the 8 surface-mounting thermostats with display, installed in every room for local temperature control.
Thanks to the thermostats, you can set different temperatures on the basis of how the home is actually being used at various times of day: you can choose to heat only certain rooms, automatically setting different temperatures in different areas. If the heating/conditioning system is operating, the opening of the windows would cause heat loss in winter and cool air loss in summer. In addition, the project foresees the installation of specific magnetic contacts on all the door and window frames, interacting with the domotic system: thanks to these contacts, the heating/cooling system of the individual room is activated/deactivated to avoid any useless waste of energy if doors or windows are kept open for long periods.
LIGHTING SYSTEM: SMART LIGHTING CONTROL In the first high efficiency solution, the technological systems of the home were made fully automatic, with ten presence detectors distributed throughout the home. In all the areas of the home, light switch-on and switch-off is automated to coincide with the actual transit of people. The number of push-buttons and socket-outlets for energy take-off remains the same.
MOTORISED SYSTEMS: THE SMART CONTROL OF WINDOWS AND ROLLER SHUTTERS The control of the roller shutters (shielding) is motorised and automatically activated by the presence detectors which, on the basis of outdoor light intensity, raise the shutters to maximise the inflow of natural light during the winter and lower them in the summer (in unoccupied parts of the home) to prevent the sun from overheating the rooms and hence increasing the consumption of the air-conditioning system. In addition, all the roller shutters can be timed so they are all closed in the evening to ensure the safety of the home (and reducing the loss of heated or cooled air). Each of the seven windows of the home is fitted with wireless magnetic contacts that communicate the status (open or closed) of the window: the control panel deactivates the terminals in the relative room to avoid any useless waste of energy.
DRIVES: THE SMART CONTROL OF DOMESTIC APPLIANCES To further rationalise electricity consumption, you are advised to stipulate a 2-level tariff with your energy supplier. Without an automation system to manage off-peak consumption however, the division of electricity consumption levels may be difficult and, in some cases, lead to excessive consumption costs. The domotic system control panel lets you programme the domestic appliances (like the washing machine and dishwasher) to operate in the night and at weekends, when the specific cost of your electricity supply is lower. Two channels, connected to the washing machine and dishwasher respectively, receive the signal from the BUS system and allow these appliances to be used in a fully automatic manner. This means about 90% of the electricity consumed by domestic appliances can be consumed during the most cost-effective time bands.
And finally, the control panel can also be used to programme two simple scenes that make a notable contribution to energy savings and the safety of the home. The first scene is the centralised closure of the home:
- deactivating the environmental air-conditioning or activating the economy mode to reduce energy consumption;
- closing all the shielding devices to guarantee the safety of the home;
- disconnecting the power supply to all the automated loads;
- switching off all the lights.
The second scene is the centralised opening, to re-enable all the functions deactivated by the previous scene.
Command devices: a system that's easy to control and manage As well as the conventional push-buttons for controlling the lighting, the renovation project also includes a control panel for managing all the system functions from one single point: apart from controlling lights and roller shutters in fact, the panel also lets you adjust the temperature in every room independently; what's more, each terminal can be timed to avoid useless energy waste when there is nobody in that specific area.