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"The Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles \u2014 it delivers smart mobility services. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.\nIn a perfect world, with perfect circumstances, who wouldn't want a self-sustaining smart home? These days, there are so many goals towards home efficiency and sustainability that many are clamoring to \"green\" their homes as best as possible \u2014 with the ultimate achievement of creating a zero-energy home on the horizon.\nIn the real world, building an energy-friendly home is a lot more difficult than it sounds. While you can make a fairly sustainable home simply by employing sensible green building adjustments to insulation, home materials, lighting and heating, that's not all that goes into a truly efficient home. You can have a perfectly efficient home constructed,but it's what you use inside the home that counts.\n\"Gaming consoles, TVs, cable boxes; all of these things, when they're running at low energy 24 hours a day, can be very draining.\" says Bruce Sullivan, builder outreach specialist for the Earth Advantage Institute.\nMashable spoke with Sullivan, and Reid Cram, director of marketing at global luxury home control company Vantage, to find out how to make the inside of your home just as sustainable as the outside with smart technology. \nWould you renovate your home with sustainable smart technology to cut your energy bills? Let us know in the comments.\nEnergy Monitoring System\n\n\nGraphic of the application of a C.E.S. System, courtesy C-E-Systems.com\n\nOne of the key features in the most cutting-edge \"net-zero\" homes is actually something that has been on the smart tech radar for some time now: a digitized energy monitoring system. Whether you're on the traditional power grid or relying solely on solar energy, computerized electricity systems not only monitor the electricity a home is using at any given time, but also how much each individual outlet is using.\nSullivan says that energy monitoring systems are staples of net-zero homes across the country, as they provide a way for homeowners to actually stay net-zero. In fact, how would anyone know that their home isn't consuming any energy if they didn't have a proper way to monitor it? From one simple interface located in the center of the home, an energy monitoring system displays wattage from everything \u2014 including major appliances, like a dryer.\n\"If you wanted to zero-in on the specific elements that are problematic, you need a much higher resolution on where these issues are occurring,\" Sullivan explains. \"And that's what these systems do.\"\nThe system is so exact, Sullivan says, that when a net-zero show home that the Earth Advantage Institute helped design and build suddenly quadrupled its energy readout on the visual panel, they were able to track down exactly which outlet was sucking the energy \u2014 and the culprit of the consumption.\n\"The interior designer needed to iron the drapes,\" Sullivan explains. \"And the iron alone quadrupled the energy draw on the house.\"\nRetrofitting a home with an energy monitoring system is much simpler than at first blush. In fact, Sullivan says that the system can be installed where your circuit breaker panel is.\n\"You can just connect it to the circuits in your circuit breaker,\" Sullivan says. \"And you can then break down all of your power sources at the outlet and light level.\" \nGrid-Tied Power Inverters\n\n\nA Sunny Boy grid-tied inverter from SMA Solar Technology\n \nAre you interested in taking your home to the next level by producing energy through solar panels? Sullivan suggests you consider investing in a grid-tied power inverter, which actually allows for homes to give back energy to the local power grid.\n\"It converts the direct current that is generated by the panels into the alternate current that your house uses,\" Sullivan says. \"They allow that interconnection between the utility and the house.\"\nWhile some homeowners prefer to rely solely on battery reserves for solar power, grid-tied inverters enable homes to be more sustainable \u2014  they connect to traditional energy systems in times of need and repay the system with excess energy when it becomes available. In some cities, grid-tied inverters can actually make money for a sustainable home, if the local utilities actually buy the excess energy. \n\"If you're going to be on the grid, you need to be on this system,\" Sullivan says.\nMade for both U.S. and international grid systems, the grid-tied inverter can be professionally installed along with a solar power system. And don't be concerned about pumping electricity back into the system \u2014 all inverters come with a smart fail-safe unit that notes when a power line is down or undergoing maintenance.\n\"The inverter requires the grid power to be on in order for it to operate, and there's no way that you can circumvent it,\" Sullivan says. \nLuxury Environment Management Systems\n\n\nBelieve it or not, a few luxury features and home upgrades have some serious sustainability advantages. If you're more interested in upgrading your home than making it green, then an environment control system could be easy on the eyes and offer some surprises on your next utilities bill. Cram says that a luxury environment management system that operates both lighting and temperature, like the one that Vantage offers throughout the Americas (systems in new homes can be implemented all over the world), can drastically reduce utilities costs.\n\"Numbers are going to vary based on living patterns and the quality of the programming, but we've seen anywhere from the twenties to the forties in percentage of savings,\" Cram says. \nManagement systems like Vantage's enable people to completely customize every living area to their liking. Which, for the energy conscious, means that they can dim or shut off unnecessary lights at any point in time using the interactive touchpad, or automatically turn off lights based on room-by-room occupancy. Cram adds that one of the ways that Vantage's management system embraces sustainability is through a feature called \"Daylight Harvesting,\" which is an automatic setting that dims or brightens lights based on available sunlight. \n\"Our central controller is connected to an astronomical clock, so we track sunrise and sunset,\" Cram explains. \"We can change the shades, change the temperature and change the light level in the home.\"\nCram adds that there's an \"away mode\" for the management system for those who go on vacation, which can shut down the entire lighting system and adjust temperatures to ensure that no extra energy is expended. And Reid says there's no concern about making any last-minute changes while you're away. \n\"If you're leaving your home and you forgot to put anything on away mode, then you'll be able to set anything using your iPhone or smartphone,\" Cram says.\nThe system is full of amenities \u2014 and pricey \u2014 but the ultimate result is that even luxury doesn't have to be wasteful. \nThe Future\nSullivan says that there are plenty of things to look forward to in crafting the smart and energy-efficient home of the future. One major breakthrough on the horizon is the implementation of smart appliances that can recognize when to curb their energy uses throughout the day, meaning that your microwave would be able to go into a \"sleep mode\" until used again, or your refrigerator would refrain from any major cooling during peak periods. \nBut before all of that happens, the key thing to sustainability is awareness, which is what these systems are built for.\n\"You just don't get it until you see it right in front of you,\" Sullivan says.\nSeries supported by BMW i\n\n\u00A0\nThe Global Innovation Series is supported by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. It delivers more than purpose-built electric vehicles; it delivers smart mobility services within and beyond the car. Visit bmw-i.com or follow @BMWi on Twitter.Are you an innovative entrepreneur? Submit your pitch to BMW i Ventures, a mobility and tech venture capital company.\n\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, dblight"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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