The future of prestigious properties: automated passive homes, solar panels

 Home automation of the intelligent house

Home automation makes it possible to control and automate, locally or remotely, certain electrical equipment in the home in order to improve its comfort. Equipment and service management is done in one place and relies on all the smart home electrical devices, the smart grids. The integration of digital, and more particularly New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT), into housing constitutes, in this way, an intelligent system.

Home of the future if there is one, the smart home thus makes it possible to act on the regulation of energy within its operation. Whether the accommodation is in Bretagne, Paris or the Landes,  home automation makes it possible to remotely manage connected heating devices. Its intelligent electricity distribution network stores and sends information about the building to adjust and optimize energy consumption. Also, by means of sensors, it is possible to manage the heating system, lighting, ventilation, air conditioning, household appliances or even surveillance systems. 

Another advantage, and not the least, is that connected home networks are more responsive due to smart grid technologies. Thus:

• - Electricity that is not consumed is fed back into the network, which improves the energy consumption of the home.
• - Renewable energies are more easily favored, because they are intermittently integrated into the distribution network.

Self-sufficient consumption thanks to solar panels

Key objects in the ecological transition allowing homes to become more and more autonomous: photovoltaic solar panels. These represent a very beautiful source of energy, electricity, solar energy. In addition, a house equipped with panels  allows self-consumption, the fact of consuming solar electricity produced by the solar installation of the home. Several forms of solar self-consumption are possible: 

• - Total self-consumption: consuming all of the solar energy produced by photovoltaic panels to supply the home's electrical system. It is more economically advantageous to consume your own electricity, especially as the Regulated Sales Tariff (TRV) for electricity increases every year.
• - Self-consumption with the sale of surplus: consuming part of the production and reselling the unused electricity to the grid (thanks to the EDF Solar Purchase Obligation).

However, for a functional installation of solar panels, you need to be able to determine the number of solar panels you need to install, your annual consumption in kilowatt-hours and the position of the house. The region in which the accommodation is located is also to be taken into account. Obviously, a beautiful house located in Provence  or Corse  will have better profitability than a house located in the North of France. The optimum conditions for the solar installation are as follows:

• - A southern orientation allowing the photovoltaic panels to better capture solar radiation.
• - An inclination of the roof between 30 ° and 35 °.
• - No source of shading that could prevent the proper functioning of the photovoltaic system.
• - An appropriate size of the roof: so that the solar installation has sufficient space to be profitable.

The passive house, minimal energy needs

Another promising system: the passive house. This is a home with minimal energy requirements and which produces its own energy. In order to consume as little energy as possible, passive housing relies first of all on efficient insulation with quality windows, exterior walls as well as the ceiling and roof well insulated or a green roof. .

But that's not all, the air must also circulate well. The housing must then incorporate a double-flow CMV which sucks in the stale air and replaces it with heated or cooled air. In addition, on the heating system side, it integrates technologies and renewable energies such as geothermal energy, solar energy, biofuels, biomass or even the Canadian well. Since thermal bridges have been removed, the sustainable home needs less energy and can therefore very easily power its heating systems - and even lighting - with green energy. In the long run, this represents substantial energy savings.

Finally, this type of habitat uses biosourced materials (wood, hemp, cork, etc.), premises and older techniques, which makes it both a very elegant house, but also very respectful of the environment.