How the Matter protocol could contribute to making homes more sustainable
… and make you save money
Intro
By mistake I learned about the existence of the Matter protocol and how it could revolutionize the way how to get towards private net-zero homes (private homes consuming no energy from the public electricity network).
I was researching current smart home technologies from a home security perspective (cameras, locks, etc.). That way I figured out about the existence of the Matter protocol.
Why is Matter so great?
After digging a bit deeper into nerdy tech details I was kind of impressed. The security architecture of the system is that good that even me (pretty critical when it comes to IT security and data privacy) would install an energy management system based on Matter. I will not go into this topic cause it’s quite exhaustive and not relevant for end users (this article is meant for)… just believe me :)
The Matter protocol is the de-facto smart home standard nowadays. Over 500 companies joined the CSA (Connectivity Standard Alliance) as members: promoters, participants and/or adopters.
In the sustainable home context a lot of companies from industries we care about have already joined the CSA:
- manufacturers of products for measuring device energy consumption (e.g. Eve Systems),
- manufacturers of home energy systems (e.g. Schneider Electric),
- manufacturers of HVAC → Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (e.g. Viessmann),
- household appliance manufacturers (e.g. Bosch, Miele, Midea) consuming a comparable high amount of energy (freezers, washing machines, etc.).
The great thing about Matter is that devices from different manufacturers implementing the same device types (e.g. an air conditioner) can be used in an overall “towards net zero energy system” interchangeably. You don’t want to use an air conditioner from Toshiba… replace it with one from Viesmann.
Last but not least:
- manufacturers of end user facing devices like smart phones, smart TVs, etc. (e.g. Google, Apple).
This later point might not be obvious, but actually pretty important. Those end user facing devices allow
- provide companies platforms for their applications without the need for developing an own end user facing device and
- allow the users to interact with home energy management applications (control, display data) provided by companies.
What’s missing?
In the current state of the Matter protocol (at the time of writing version 1.3) there is no support (no device type) enabling
- companies providing dynamic electricity tariffs to integrate the related data into Matter applications,
- companies building inverters for solar systems to integrate solar systems into Matter applications and
- companies building small battery systems to integrate batteries into Matter applications.
yet.
It might not be clear for everyone yet why this matters… but this will change after having read later exemplary use cases.
Use case “building blocks”
Dynamic energy tariffs
A lot of interesting Matter use cases make use of dynamic energy tariffs.
A lot of people buy the energy for fixed prices from their energy providers. If the energy providers buy the energy on the market or if they produce it themselves with solar plants or wind farms the production cost of energy varies over time. In many countries energy providers offer dynamic energy tariffs (even have to in some countries) to feed forward those reduced energy costs to their end customers. Sometimes the energy price can be even negative… means you could even get money for consuming energy. This is pretty wired but a consequence of the German → European energy market.
Use cases
Use case: Decrease amortization time of plug-in solar system + battery in flats
At the time of writing in Germany the amortization time of plug-in solar systems (german: “Steckersolaranlagen”) in flats is pretty long (> 5 years).
The reason for this it that
- the continuous power consumption in flats is pretty low and
- batteries cannot be used for storing energy (e.g. to use it in the evening) cause it cannot be synchronized with energy needed at a given time.
An example to illustrate the 1. point:
I’ve bought a used plug-in solar system 2 years ago for 125 EUR. My girlfriend and me are working in home-office full-time. Consequently the energy needed for our home office equipment (roughly 25 Watt per laptop + screen) adds to the remaining continuous energy consumption of our “energy-hungry” devices (refrigerator, freezer). Our max. continuous power consumption is roughly 100 Watt. The solar system delivers a power of max. 400 Watt. This difference between max. produced and max. consumed power is actually good cause even under “bad light conditions” (early in the morning, in the evening, in winter time, …) we can produce as much power as we need. However all the energy we don’t use ourself flows into the public energy system without compensation (good for the public and the energy providers, bad for us cause we “give away” energy for free). Nevertheless in our specific scenario, the system has already paid for itself after 2 years. But our scenario is rather rare cause most flats will have less continuous need for power and plug-in solar systems are usually bought new and are more costly.
Now we come to the 2nd point, a problem actually:
The plug-in solar system is directly connected with the energy network of the flat. And the energy network of the flat is directly connected to the public energy network itself. In Europe (including Germany) this is required to synchronize the frequency of the alternating current produced by the solar system (power inverter) with the frequency of the public energy network (50 Hertz all over Europe). It’s not possible to connect a battery to the energy network of the flat cause the energy in the battery would flow into the public energy network right away. There is no technological way of controlling when to store energy in the battery (light is generating energy in the plug-in solar system) and when to release it into the energy network of the flat (e.g. if “energy-hungry” devices like washing machine, baking oven, air conditioner, … actually need it rather short time).
Thats exactly where Matter comes into play:
- A Matter plug-in solar system (more precisely the power converter) could notify a Matter home energy system about the current power produced (in Watts).
- All power consumers (Matter devices itself or via Matter smart plug) notify the Matter home energy system about the current power consumed (in Watts).
- As long as the power produced by the Matter plug-in solar system > overall power consumed → store energy in controllable Matter battery.
- As soon as the power produced by the Matter plug-in solar system < overall power consumed + battery is loaded → release energy stored in Matter battery into the energy system of the flat. (If the Matter battery is not loaded the Matter home energy system shall not connect it to the energy network of the flat cause the battery would be loaded with energy from the public energy network what would result in energy loss and we want to prevent from.)
Use case: Dynamic energy tariff — Run washing machine based on cheapest, predicted daily energy price
Many households run their washing machine in the morning (before going to work) or in the evening (after coming home from work).
If you are using a fixed per kWh energy tariff or when you use a dynamic energy tariff but run your washing machine manually at the wrong time the energy price per kWh could be significantly higher as it could/should be.
With a Matter based energy management system the this problem could be solved like follows:
- You load the washing machine in the morning.
- A Matter device of your dynamic energy tariff provider gets today's energy prices from the companies server (based on day-ahead market prices).
- You program the Matter home energy system application (needs to run on a device inside your personal homes local Matter network, not your smart phone) to run the washing machine somewhen between 8am and 7pm based on the cheapest energy price time slot (e.g. 3h for longest washing machine program).
- Cause the Matter home energy system application already knows the cheapest price time slot it shows it in the Matter home energy system application counterpart on your smartphone.
- The Matter home energy system application starts the washing machine at 3pm (you are at work and not at home).
- The Matter enabled washing machine notifies the Matter home energy system over the local Matter network as soon as the washing machine program ended. The Matter home energy system application counterpart on your smartphone notifies you at work that the washing machine program finished.
- After coming home from work you can pull your clothes out of the washing machine. You are happy cause you’ve spend less or nothing for energy.
In Germany there is a significant lack of short time energy storage systems (usually huge battery farms located near to transformer stations in the energy network). From a system perspective it makes way more sense to use the energy when it’s available (the energy price is low → usually high ratio of sustainable solar/wind energy available) instead of building (expensive battery plants) to store it (energy is lost due to conversion loss). If you think about the use case idea scaled to thousands of homes it could contribute to stabilizing the local energy consumption and avoid building batter farms.
Further use cases
Further use cases will be added in the future. Follow me and get notified about any future update of this article.
Feel free to comment for questions and further use case ideas.
Developer resources
If you are a developer you might find my contributions (GitHub fkromer/awesome-matter) to the GitHub rienkkk/awesome-matter interesting.
