How does automated energy management work with Loxone?

1. Recording and visualising all energy flows:

The first step is all about understanding your building’s energy usage. A Loxone system can help you measure and analyse the energy consumption of your building through the clear app interface. We need to know where the energy flows to, how much each component consumes and how much power the building produces.

There are powerful software features that enable integration with many different energy-related devices, such as solar panel inverters, battery storage, EV chargers, etc, and a Loxone installer can incorporate these into a holistic system to provide a clear overview of the current energy status of building operations at all times and enable targeted optimisation measures.

2. Reducing basic power consumption:

If you are looking for a building energy management system (BeMS), Loxone can be installed to reduce the base load by automatically switching off consumers that are not in use, and much more. It can also help to identify devices that are consuming a surprising amount of energy even when they are not being used – and you’ll be able to spot this in the Loxone App.

Once a Loxone system has been configured to monitor all the relevant energy data, the second step is to actively work at reducing your building’s baseline electricity consumption – this is the energy that keeps your building running day to day.

For example, in an office environment this could be automatically turning off printers and external monitors when no one is in the building – even though these devices may have their own standby setting, Step 1 would have identified that these are probably contributing to a lot of wasted energy as part of the building’s baseline consumption.

Even if the example of the office above had solar panels, without having a holistic approach to building energy management, the analysis of consumption and the subsequent efforts to reduce the baseload would have been completely overlooked.

3. Shifting energy consumption:

The Loxone system is very strategic when it comes to drawing energy from the grid. Once configured, it will help you shift your energy consumption peaks to times when energy is cheaper based on the spot market. Due to holistic monitoring and energy management, the system can prioritise and reschedule aplliances in the most cost-effective and energy-efficient way. For example, it’s cheaper to charge electric cars or run the dishwasher during the night than in the early evening when the cost of electricity is at its highest.

Even better, energy usage will cost nothing if solar surplus power is available. If you connect your wallbox to a PV system, it charges your EV with reusable green energy by using solar power that’s not being used by other appliances. This process can be automated by the Loxone building management system, so you can minimise additional power consumption and maximise your cost savings without having to manually adjust anything after the installation is complete.