• Feature Articles
  • Digital Issues
  • News
  • Events
  • Products
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Trending
  • National plumbing codes take effect in Alta on April 1
  • Electric tankless units
  • TSSA issues warning of trunk slammers
  • Advanced recirculation technology
  • Wolseley opens new store in Ajax
  • Alberta mass timber buildings can now build up to 12-storeys
  • Cordless threader
  • Ont. construction sector on the up-and-up
Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn YouTube
Plumbing & HVAC
  • Feature Articles
  • Digital Issues
  • News
  • Events
  • Products
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
Plumbing & HVAC
You are at:Home»Feature Articles»Electric Age

Electric Age

0
By Plumbing & HVAC Staff on April 12, 2022 Feature Articles
Johnson Controls’ press event at the 2022 AHR Expo covered the company’s “Connected World” strategy, new wireless smart home devices, and new AI-enabled preventive maintenance.

By Bruce Nagy

When I was a child, there were only a few large TV networks and newspapers. As the years passed these transformed into thousands of cable TV channels, and then into online networks, like YouTube and Netflix and thousands of internet channels. Media fragmentation created options, permutations, combinations, and demanded a different skill set for consuming it.

Our energy and building technologies are now transitioning from the old, centralized way to decentralized, diversified ways. New and varied skills will be needed. We may be in the mechanical business, but we need to know about electricity, electronics, buildings that are both self-contained and part of micro-grids, micro-grids that are both islanded and part of the global energy matrix.

Smart buildings

During the AHR Expo in Las Vegas this February and in preparation for CMPX in Toronto in March, Google has been doing media interviews about its Nest Pro Program, part of its continuing vision to become a key part of every human family and business on Earth. “We see the thermostat as the centre of any smart home and we have millions of Nest installations,” says Gene Lanois, Nest Pro director. His pitch is that contractors who sign up can be digitally connected as the installer of the system, whenever service is needed.

Smart home technology is expected to grow more than 13 per cent each year, from $126 billion this year to about $208 billion in 2026, when there will be nearly 600 million users, about one-quarter of the world’s buildings. The largest and most lucrative market is North America, which is already about $35 billion. Household penetration rates in Canada are very high, 32 per cent now and 53 per cent by 2026, a $4.1 billion business in the U.S.

In 2020, Johnson Controls acquired Qolsys Inc., a smart-home manufacturer. Its trade show narrative involves a “connected world strategy,” and a new Zigbee mesh router that can communicate with up to 35 wirelessly enabled equipment controllers at distances of 250 ft. It’s also pushing Metasys IP equipment controllers that offer pandemic pressurization mode for instant higher levels of ventilation flush, and touting its 300 per cent investment increase in heat pumps and natural refrigerants. According to Global Market Insights, the worldwide electric heat pump market will grow from $53 billion in 2020 to $85 billion in 2028.

Buildings and vehicles as batteries

If you have solar panels on your roof, electricity storage in the garage and an electric car full of lithium batteries, you’ve got power that could be accessed with or without grid utility.

We rarely use it, but we want 300 miles of range when buying an electric car. That’s a lot of power relative to the needs of houses and some businesses. Not surprisingly, engineers see an opportunity for sharing at specific times. There is currently an explosion of technology development to support this possibility.
Ford is advertising that its new electric F-150 pickup truck will be vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capable, to power your house in an emergency.

Ford Motor’s new fully electric F-150 Lightning features V2G technology, which allows it to also power a house in an emergency.

Communities as energy producers

Canada learned from a tragedy in July 2013 when a 73-car freight train carrying crude oil accidentally rolled down a hill and derailed in downtown Lac Mégantic, a small Quebec town east of Sherbrooke. Several railcars exploded, killing 47 people. About half the buildings were destroyed and the other half contaminated beyond saving.

The town has moved forward, rebuilding, and installing a modern microgrid, which consists of solar panels, energy storage and load management tools. The control system can switch off Hydro-Québec and operate independently during extreme weather events. Lac Mégantic is not alone. Medicine Hat College in Alberta has installed a micro-grid that includes a solar parking lot canopy and E.V. charging station. It will act as an equipment testing site for innovators, a learning lab for students, and a demonstration project for the province.

Prince Edward Island is building a micro-grid with a 10-megawatt solar array generating enough power for about 6,000 typical homes, and grid-connected batteries. It will provide clean energy and peak load management in a self-contained residential, industrial, and commercial community. It’s connected to the grid, but can also be islanded.

The Xeni Gwet’in First Nation, sixty-two miles from the nearest electricity in B.C. recently completed a solar energy microgrid with 1,000 kilowatt/hours of battery storage that will reduce the community’s reliance on fossil fuels by 60 per cent.

Virtual power plants

Tesla has some projects in California and Australia called “virtual power plants.” It also involves voluntary assemblage of self-generators to trade power with the larger grid. Similar programs are known as demand response, and may involve only smart meters and thermostats like in Ontario. They help utilities avoid building more gas plants for peak demand. In Tesla’s case, the software brings together a block of available renewable power from disparate rooftop solar or home battery sources.

The Siemens micro-grid lab in Princeton, New Jersey includes solar carports, batteries, software, and numerous engineers conducting research.

Siemens has created a “micro-grid lab” for experimentation at its headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey. It consists of a parking lot solar carport, electric vehicle charging stations, batteries, and software. ASHRAE has created something similar at its renovated new headquarters in Peachtree, Georgia.

Overall costs for micro-grids have declined by 25 to 30 per cent since 2014, and according to Researchandmarkets.com in Dublin, the global microgrid market will grow from 24.6 billion in 2021 to $42.3 billion by 2026. Bloomberg NEF predicts that electricity storage will grow faster, doubling six times from 2016 to 2030.

In the U.S. and Canada, homeowners and business owners have been installing about a half-million rooftop solar systems each year. While Canada’s growth has been slower, it has begun to ramp up.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleFederal budget addresses key issues in the skilled trades
Next Article Building permits reach record high in Feb

Related Posts

Reaching for a lifeline in business

Hybrid electric heat pump water heaters

Ventilation efficiency fallacies

Comments are closed.

TWITTER
Tweets by Plumbing_HVAC_
RSS Plumbing & HVAC
  • National plumbing codes take effect in Alta on April 1
  • Electric tankless units
  • TSSA issues warning of trunk slammers
  • Advanced recirculation technology
  • Wolseley opens new store in Ajax
  • Alberta mass timber buildings can now build up to 12-storeys
  • Cordless threader
  • Ont. construction sector on the up-and-up
  • Equipco’s founder dies at age 73
  • Tank protection technology
About
About

Plumbing & HVAC

Canada's largest and most qualified circulation to the mechanical trades.

Subscribe Now!

Recent Posts
March 24, 2023

National plumbing codes take effect in Alta on April 1

March 23, 2023

TSSA issues warning of trunk slammers

March 22, 2023

Wolseley opens new store in Ajax

Pages
  • Advertise
  • eNewsletter
  • Feature Articles
  • Get in Touch
  • News
  • Products
  • Subscribe
Copyright © 2021 Plumbing & HVAC all rights reserved | Designed and Developed by Upnorthwebs

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.