The Smart Sustainable Resilient Infrastructure Association (SSRIA) is here to present its Green Building Technologies Network (GBTN) Spotlight Series. This series will be featuring a project team once every other month until March 2023. The aim is to get to know the projects and teams working in the GBTN and support further collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing among our members.
Our guest this month is LEVVEN, welcome!
Project Type: Residential | New Construction
Project Aim: Reduce material use and energy consumption related to lighting residential buildings
Project Summary: Click here for the complete project summary
Levven provides whole-home smart controls to lower the cost to build, purchase, and operate a new home. Levven smart, wire-free electrical controls enable efficient power management in your home. The project is installing, testing and monitoring over 30 homes with and without the innovative made in Alberta lighting controls. We interviewed James Keirstead to find out more!
Levven Electronics has developed a a whole home power and lighting control system that leverages wireless technology, requires minimal power to run, reduces materials and simplifies the construction process all the while rewarding consumers with no-cost energy savings. Where did this innovative idea come from?
Jim Qualie and myself came up with the concept to solve an issue Landmark Homes was having in their factory built wall panels. They wanted to seal the walls in manufacturing but couldn’t because of the switch leg wire requiring inspection. Developing a wireless switch solves that issue easily.
Adoption is the biggest hurdle to sharing the benefits of home automation on a mass scale, what did it take to get the home builders participating on this project to sign up?
We needed to be able to show quantifiable proof that it wouldn’t increase cost and deliver homes faster while being as reliable as current switching technology.
What did it take to get homeowners willing to sign up, what were the most common hesitations?
Homeowners are seeing mobile device access to virtually everything in their lives. The idea that they could access, program and operate their home from their mobile device for convenience and operating cost reduction is very appealing to them. The biggest area of hesitation has been whether the system would be simple to program and operate yet as reliable as wired switches have been for them.
Are there any health risks associated with wireless home automation systems?
None. The wireless radiation off of our devices is much less then a cell phone or your home WiFi and isn’t constant. Meaning it really only transmits a small wireless burst from a switch when it is pressed then it goes back to sleep. This is a very safe technology and even more safe when you consider it allows the builder to eliminate up to 1200 feet of high voltage wiring in your home.
What advice do you have for homeowners who are interested in Levven whole home power and lighting control systems but are not ready to commit to a novel idea?
Personally I would take the leap because this kind of technology is what new homeowners will demand in the coming years. Not having it will impact resale attractiveness and value. However, if they are just too fearful then they could wire their house normally and install lighting controls after market. It will just cost more and not have the same environmental benefit as there are no material savings.
How much is the additional cost to install a whole home lighting and control system over a typical code built standard lighting system?
We have been able to prove out the economics with builders and electrical contractors that this can be delivered for the same cost to the homeowner.
The project has completed it’s first milestone, what has been the greatest challenge in coordinating a project of this size, 60 homes and 3+ builders is a lot of people!
Coordinating builder and contractor schedules to be able to have someone on-site to track and tabulate all the labour and material savings data. Second to that is ensuring builders are comparing the work accurately by choosing the same home models and ensuring the same crews do the comparison homes. They have been all over the place which has really impacted comparisons.
Is the learning curve for trades looking to add installation of wireless technology steep? How much training would an electrician need to be proficient at it and what would that training entail?
No we have a full online learning management system for training them and their staff on how to install devices correctly. It is quite simple as we custom provision control groups at our factory. All they have to remember is to install the correctly labelled project pack into the right home and follow the simple grouping/ungrouping protocol when adding or removing a controller from the home. Training takes less than an hour.
What software is needed to control the home automation system and what can it be programmed to do? Does a homeowner require training to run their home automated lighting systems?
The system comes with a free mobile device application and the entire system can be programmed and controlled from it. We continue to develop the application with feedback from customers to improve the user interface so that it is very intuitive for the customer to use. The app includes a built in “how to” section to help customers if they get stuck. We also have an online learning management system that customers can access to learn even more about the program-ability and functionality of the ever updating system.
The energy savings from this technology has been estimated at anywhere from 72kWh-330kWh per home, but the true significance of this application would be seen with mass adoption. Is there any way that Levven switch technology could ever become a building code requirement?
I’ll start by saying change is hard. We have been working with code bodies across Canada and the United States to increase code adoption since 2015. It is only now slowly changing. However, I would say as more home builders include this technology in their homes I believe the economic and environmental benefits will be more and more validated to the point that regions regulatory bodies will mandate it. Every small thing that can be done to reduce our footprint must be considered if we are serious about eliminating our carbon footprint.
In your view, what will be the greatest reward or take-away from this project?
There are three things that will come from this study which will make it more compelling for electrical contractors, builders, homeowners and policy makers to embrace this new technology. They are: (1) Proven reduction in building materials, labour and build cycle days; (2) A life cycle comparison between traditional wired switches and our wireless switching technology proving this has a smaller captured carbon demand; (3) Proof that being able to program features like on/off timers, astronomic timers for outdoor lighting, zone and all off switching, etc. will reduce a homes electrical consumption.