The digital breaker in your home

Right now, switching between renewable energy and gridcentralised power sources in your home is difficult for your electrical system. Kennedy believes the static nature of existing power distribution systems is one reason we haven’t seen widespread adoption of renewable energy at a residential level.

For a grid-connected solar home, for example, residents sometimes have to temporarily disconnect their solar input because traditional power systems (including circuit breakers) aren’t advanced enough to manage multiple, variant power sources. Kennedy says solid-state circuit breaker technology would solve that problem because it could ‘transition between any source you want’, be it a solar array or another energy storage system.

For most people, managing an analogue breaker isn’t much more involved than flicking a switch, but Atom Power’s digital circuit breaker would give you full control and visibility of your home’s electrical infrastructure, from anywhere.

That electrical panel hiding in your garage or cupboard would be more accessible and manageable because all your circuits would be monitored within a single interface. You could turn specific circuits on and off, label panels, and manage your home’s power sources from a smartphone app. A real-time metering function would let you monitor your power consumption over time, too.

Another benefit to a digitised electrical system is its ability to communicate with all the smart technology in your home, from your garage-door opener to your kitchen appliances. This lets you check if things are on or off, open

or closed, awake or asleep. ‘Solid-state switching is the only technology that enables you to integrate your power system with anything,’ claims Kennedy. ‘We are already doing this on the commercial side, and it’s all scalable to residential. Right now, we’re on a path to miniaturise this tech to make it more cost-effective.’

Within the next 12 months, Kennedy expects Atom Power to scale digital circuit breaker technology down to a cost-effective size that will make it suitable for residential use. Their challenge at the moment is reducing thermal losses in their products. As they are now, digital circuit breakers aren’t conducting power as efficiently as their mechanical counterparts, meaning more energy consumption on the consumer end.