Off grid with Lutron HomeWorks Interactive Home Automation System [RE-wrench

[Jeff Yago]

Nick,

As you pointed out, my 1993 solar home represents one of the first
installations combining inverters, a generator, and batteries, to a whole
house automation system that included remote control of 60 lighting and
appliance circuits by phone and computer, wireless driveway controls from
cars, remote greenhouse watering and HVAC system control.

As I stated in a past post that you quoted, I could not get the inverter
manufacturers to understand the control problems we were having, and could
not get the home automation manufacturers to even talk about an inverter as
a power source.

I found that all home automation system control design engineers start with
one common assumption - that the power source will be constant, clean, at a
fixed voltage and with a perfect 60 cycle sine wave form.  Anything other
than this voids their warranties.  I might add that I have actually
witnessed some home automation products catching fire when powered from a
modified sinewave inverter, and some brands of automation wall switches will
stay very hot to touch!

Here is what I learned:

Rule 1 - Don't even think about it!

Rule 2 - If you ignore rule #1, keep it simple.  Trying to turn on the
living room light from a remote control lost under the couch (with the TV
remote) is not really home automation to the homeowner. Most people will
actually use only a small fraction of their system's capabilities, like
turning on a few outside lights or main entry lights from several different
locations.

Rule 3 - Use only switching devices designed like latching relays that stay
in their last position if there is a power "blip".  Many of these relays are
solid state devices, and will reset to "ON" after any part cycle power
interruption like switching from grid to inverter to generator.

Rule 4 - These home automation systems are designed for remote control, and
their designers are not concerned about their own power consumption.  These
systems can really add up to one big 24 hour/day "parasitic" load.  If your
system requires a computer "front end", use the "black box" type with solid
state hard disk memory that you program from a laptop, then dis-connect the
computer.  These have far less standby power consumption than a full
computer.  If you need lots of control relays, make sure they use little or
no power after they switch state.

Rule 5 - You said your system controls by DC communication wiring, but I
think you will find that most of these automation systems control ALL of the
home audio/video equipment by an infra-red signal converter, which means all
of this audio/video equipment must have their remote power control circuits
energized to function, which is also a big standby 24 hour/day loss, and
this is the equipment most home automation buyers want to remotely control!
These systems also require video multiplexers in order to send the video
from a source in one room to another and these also operate 24 hours per day
and do not like power problems.

Rule 6 - Go back and read Rule #1.

Jeff Yago

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