Lumin Smart Home Circuit Breaker

May 31, 2019

What is a smart circuit breaker? How does it apply to your solar panel system? Andrew and Kyle talk about Lumin Energy Management Platform and explain how it replaces traditional unresponsive on/off circuits with intelligent and smart circuit breakers.

Let’s dive into the main functionalities of circuit breakers before understanding the benefits of these smart devices for energy efficient homes.

What Is A Circuit Breaker?

We all have a small piece of electrical equipment hiding in a dark corner somewhere in our basements that is capable of protecting our homes in case of a power surge. These are simple electromechanical switches called circuit breakers that contains an electromagnet where the current flows. If the power rises above a certain level, the electromagnet becomes energized to throw a mechanical switch, which breaks the circuit.

Unlike a traditional fuse, that has simple strands of wire that cut off the current by melting in the event of increased power before being replaced, a circuit breaker can be manually or automatically resumed to normal operation.

How Can A Circuit Breaker Be Smart? And When Do You Need a Smart Circuit Breaker?

Remember circuit breakers are the first place that electricity flows as it enters your home or your apartment. So they can be considered as powerful gateways to smart homes and the smart grid.

When devices like circuit breakers are made intelligent, you will gain flexibility on your battery storage and would be able to understand each device connected to your home battery system.

Lumin, a Virginia-based energy management company, has come up with an innovative technology that makes the circuit panel ‘smart’ by introducing the Lumin Energy Management Platform. This platform harnesses rich, meaningful electricity data and, more importantly, providing unprecedented control of a home’s electrical usage.

Solar and Smart Devices

Energy management platforms combines photovoltaic panels, solar energy storage, and smart circuits to automate energy optimization. The entire system includes small smart devices like circuit breakers that measure and record power usage. The data from these smart devices can be combined with information on solar power production to help users make the most out of their solar power.

Inside The Lumin Energy Management Platform

The Lumin Energy Management Platform consists of smart circuits powered by predictive algorithms. The platform solves a specific problem that is connected with the adaption of residential energy storage systems. Residential batteries are big and expensive but there is a limitation to the loads that can be backed up.

Lumin’s hardware, software, and its data, enables whole home backup and makes homes more responsive to the conditions like preferences, outage length, charge state, etc.

Lumin Smart Panel:

It is the gateway to the Lumin Insights software and the brain of the Lumin Energy Management Platform. The panel box sits between your distribution panel and all your appliances.

Lumin Insights:

This is the software that can record your preferences, create modes, enables smart circuits, sets schedules, sign up for alerts, and understand devices. This dashboard gives you the circuit level energy consumption and costs.

Benefits of Lumin Energy Management Platform

With Lumin Energy Management Platform, you can:

1. Optimize Energy Storage
2. Energy Savings
3. Safety

Optimize Energy Storage

• You can maximize ROI in solar and storage solutions in the era of residential demand charges, time of use rates, and declining net metering programs.
• Lumin Smart Panel can strengthen the system’s resilience during blackouts. It can prioritize critical loads, conserve power, and extend battery operation.
• You can make the most of your own solar generation by syncing the household consumption with on-site generation.

Energy Savings

• The Lumin Energy Management Platform would enable you to reduce unnecessary energy waste and help you save money through convenient automated scheduling of your home’s circuits.
• You can increase energy efficiency and reduce carbon footprint.
• You can make your entire home energy smart with a ‘plug-and-play’ solution.
• Gain energy independence.

Safety

• You can monitor the performance of all your appliances and can know ahead of time when they might need replacement.
• The system automatically turns off the circuits of appliances that you have accidentally left on. Even you’re at work or on vacation, you will have peace of mind knowing that your home is safer.

Want to know more about home energy management systems? Get in touch with our experts and they’ll help you make the right decision.