Colorado Mountain Homes Prepare To Pilot Autonomous Energy Management

The Basalt Vista community, nestled high in the mountains in Basalt, Colorado, is about to get a whole lot smarter in the pursuit of energy efficiency and renewable energy integration.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is installing its R&D 100 Award-winning foresee™ software in local homes to field-test smart energy management and community-level energy aggregation and coordination as part of its Smart Community project. The software will leverage physics-based modeling, machine-learning algorithms, and advanced data analytics to provide Basalt homeowners whole-home energy cost savings balanced with comfort, convenience, and grid benefits.

Participating families will allow cloud-based foresee to connect to hardware and Internet-of-Things devices throughout their homes. These include heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems, water heaters, solar photovoltaic, home battery systems, electric vehicle charging stations, wireless energy monitors, and smart water monitors. The energy management software, hosted on Amazon Web Services, will autonomously coordinate building loads with photovoltaic generation, battery storage, and the electrical grid while fulfilling occupant preferences related to energy savings, comfort, and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Additionally, a cloud-based aggregator will coordinate among multiple buildings to manage energy resources across the community.