Domestic real-time energy monitoring for households using consumer-centric smart-meter sensing
A consumer-centric smart meter: real-time domestic energy monitoring backed by the LoToNo low-carbon innovation voucher.
The Challenge
Household energy waste is invisible to the people paying for it: conventional meters record consumption but give no timely analysis or advice, so occupants cannot see which behaviours and appliances drive their usage and carbon footprint.
The Solution
The Lotono project — the funded application was titled “Domestic Real Time Energy Monitoring Sensor” — set out to build a consumer-centric smart meter providing analysis and advice on energy usage. Key hardware components were already prototyped and the solution reused NQM’s existing IoT back-end platform, with the project buying in expert product-development advice to productise the concepts. The 140-character public descriptor from the application reads: “Nquiringminds will build a consumer centric smart meter providing analysis and advice on energy usage.”
Outcomes
Note: the internal Fund-raising Summary labels this line “Lotono - Grain sensing”, but the signed LoToNo application form (Drive) shows the funded project was domestic energy monitoring; the grain-sensing description appears to be a tracker mislabel (NQM’s grain work is tracked under AgriSense / GrainCare / GrainSense).
Features
Real-time domestic energy monitoring sensor.
Analysis and advice on energy usage delivered to the householder.
Built on prototyped hardware components and NQM's existing IoT back-end platform.
Benefits
Helping households reduce energy usage and carbon footprint through visibility and advice (programme objective).
Early domestic-sensing capability feeding NQM's later smart-home and net-zero monitoring work (e.g. Fast Start Performance Analysis).
