Even the most energy-efficient home is a kind of Tower of Babel, where heating, ventilation, hot water tanks and humidifying systems don’t speak the same language. The result is wasted energy.
“The big problem is you just leave so much on the table,” said Byron Gallant, co-owner of B. Gallant Homes Ltd., which recently built a house in Nanaimo that incorporates an energy monitoring and regulating system controlled by a tablet.
“The technologies seem to act independently and it’s not working efficiently.”
The Ekostat system, developed by Qmata Technologies Inc., uses sensors, wireless technology and an Android tablet to regulate the heating, cooling and ventilation system of Mike Legge’s new home in Nanaimo.
The Ekostat is the brainchild of Mat Hallam-Eames, a programmer-analyst-turned-plumber who used his unique set of skills to resolve a problem he faced whenever he installed an energy system.
The problem is that manufacturers have their own built-in control systems (thermostats and sensors) that are not compatible with other home systems, Hallam-Eames said.
A home’s heating system, for example, might not be able to be synched with the hot water heater or air conditioning.
“I’d get really frustrated because we’d have to jury-rig things,” he said. “Sometimes when we put in, say, a solar [water heating system] together with a heating system with something else, we’d have to have three different control systems.”
Reaching into his software programming tool kit, Hallam-Eames developed Ekostat. About a year and a half ago, he approached Gallant, who happened to have a client – Legge – who wanted a state-of-the-art energy-efficient home and was willing to allow his home to be a demonstration project for the Ekostat system.
Legge’s new home was showcased earlier this week in a series of open houses. It features a number of “green” elements, including a system that uses grey water from laundry, showers and the dishwasher to flush toilets and a “solar chimney” that controls ventilation.
Radiant heat, which Gallant and Hallam-Eames say is more efficient than forced air heating, is used to heat Legge’s home. The floors are heated with pipes carrying hot water from a boiler.
Qmata’s Ekostat system uses 36 sensors throughout Legge’s home, wired into control boards, with information transmitted by Bluetooth to an Android tablet, which in turn regulates the indoor climate.
If the homeowner decides it’s too chilly in one room, he can use his smartphone to pull up a floorplan and adjust the temperature in that one room.
In multi-family developments, like townhouses, Hallam-Eames said the various units could be integrated. When one unit is too warm and another too cold, the Ekostat system could be used to balance the temperature differences.
“The two houses will be able to swap energy,” he said. “So there will be a community aspect to it.”
Hallam-Eames and Gallant say it’s too early to say just how much energy will be saved in Legge’s demonstration home by the Ekostat system, but are hoping it will be in 75% range, which would save Legge about $1,000 a year.
Recently, Hallam-Eames brought Michele Philp on board as CEO to help take the company from startup stage to commercialization. The company has grown from one – Hallam-Eames – three years ago to a staff of nine today.
Clay Howey, research head for BCIT’s Group for Advanced Information Technology, said Qmata will be competing with other wireless-based “smart energy” systems.
“The overall idea is not unique,” he said. “The problem is there’s lot of people doing it in lots of different ways.”
One of the problems for companies involved in smart-energy systems is that a range of wireless technologies and standards are being used by the manufacturers of various systems (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or Zigbee, for example).
The advantage of the Ekostat system, according to Qmata, is that it can integrate information sent from a variety of energy systems transmitting information over any number of different wireless devices.
“We have a whole range of communications,” Hallam-Eames said.
He added there are other potential applications for Ekostat, including regulating the climate for greenhouses.