Franklin Home Power Solution
Training Center
Getting a return on solar is still a key issue, even as grid outages are becoming more frequent. Improving solar efficiency by leveraging effective home energy management will provide huge benefits to homeowners.
Home energy management with storage is a valuable tool that empowers homeowners to monitor, optimize, and control their energy generation and consumption, resulting in increased efficiency, reduced costs, and a smaller carbon footprint.
Let’s dive into this topic and get a general understanding of home energy management.
Home Energy Management
Home energy management refers to the monitoring, control, and optimization of energy generation and consumption within residential properties.
It involves advanced technologies, such as energy controllers, battery storage, automation systems and software, to gather real-time data on energy generation and usage, identify patterns, and make informed decisions to maximize efficiency.
One of the keys to home energy management is it integrates solar, grid, and generator productions with battery storage to provide a more consistent, robust, and balanced energy supply for the home.
Benefits of Home Energy Management
Increased Energy Efficiency: A home energy management system with storage enables you to improve efficiency on both energy generation and consumption.
You can identify the status of energy sources, for example, solar, grid, generator, and battery storage, to determine which energy source is the most efficient source at any given time.
Take the Franklin Home Power system, for example. You can manually set the energy source preference based on actual production and needs. For instance, solar, no surprise, generates during the day. Excess energy is lost with only a solar system. With battery storage, that excess can be saved to use in the evenings, lowering the need for expensive grid energy.
On the energy consumption side, you can identify energy-consuming devices and appliances, empowering them to optimize their usage during times such as brownouts and blackouts.
For example, for necessary appliances such as refrigerators and water heaters that require a timely power supply, you can set those appliances as emergency backup loads so that the home energy management system recognizes them as critical and supplies power to them as a priority.
For loads that are less necessary, such as pool pumps and televisions, you can set them to not be powered when there is an outage.
Cost Savings: With a home energy management system in place, you can optimize energy generation and consumption and lower electricity bills.
In many states, there are different electricity prices throughout the day. With home energy management, you can store excess solar energy in batteries and use it during peak-rate periods to lower utility use and charges.
Environmental Impact: By managing energy generation and consumption, households contribute to environmental conservation.
Higher solar energy generation and lower energy consumption translate to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, less dependence on fossil fuels, and a smaller carbon footprint. Home energy management systems play a crucial role in promoting a sustainable future and combating climate change.
Real-Time Monitoring and Insights: Home energy management systems provide real-time energy generation and consumption data, allowing you to track your energy patterns and take effective actions. You can monitor the real-time data in a smartphone app and get to know which appliances consume the most energy, and when.
With access to detailed insights, you can identify energy-saving opportunities, evaluate the impact of energy-efficient upgrades, and optimize energy supply and use to reduce utility bills and increase long-term savings.
Key Components of Home Energy Management
Energy Controllers: Energy controllers are devices that can manage energy generation and consumption. Take the Franklin Home Power (FHP) system. The aGate is an intelligence controller to manage your energy source preferences, emergency backup loads, and non-emergency backup loads to achieve energy freedom.
Battery Storage: As a perfect companion for the solar system, battery storage is an inseparable supplement for increasing your solar system efficiency. As incentives for selling your excess solar production back to the utility have decreased, it is a better decision to store that excess solar and use it during peak hours.
In the FHP, the aPower is the battery storage system, combining storage cells with a battery management system and an inverter.
Automation Systems: Automation systems enable you to monitor and control the home energy management system remotely through an app, schedule operational times, and create energy-saving profiles.
This allows for better management of energy generation and consumption and greater convenience. The FranklinWH App is the FHP component providing monitoring and control to the homeowner.
Energy Management Software: Energy management software consolidates data from various sources, providing comprehensive insights into energy generation and consumption. These software solutions often include analytics and visualization tools, so you will have an easy interface to use.
Behind the scenes, the FHP system is constantly managing the system and providing information to both the homeowners and their service providers in order to keep the home’s energy management as efficient as possible and to alert you to any issues before they become a problem.
Conclusion
Home energy management systems empower you to take control of your energy generation and consumption to promote efficiency, cost savings, and sustainability.
By leveraging advanced technologies and real-time data, you can manage your whole home’s energy generation and usage, to reduce waste and contribute to environmental conservation.
Investing in home energy management benefits your household and plays a significant role in achieving a greener, more sustainable future for all.
