While some dealers are mulling over whether or not to add smart power management to their businesses, for Lightworks, located in San Diego, Calif., it seemed wrong for the company not to include it. Lightworks started as an electrical services business 30 years ago, adding AV and automation about 10 years after that. In fact, a little more than half of its business today is electrical work, with AV integration and shades making up the rest of it.
Plus, Lightworks is a Savant Platinum dealer, so, when Savant Power was introduced, the decision was easy.
“Being an integrator in Southern California, whenever you do lighting designs and engineering plans for clients, solar always comes up,” says Troy Dunnington, CEO of Lightworks. “I had been watching the evolution of [Savant CEO and founder] Robert Madonna from when he started Racepoint Energy [now part of Savant] and saw its smart power ecosystem evolve to where it is now. The reason I decided to get into it is because it is a fully engineered and baked product, and it makes sense to add that to our projects. Plus, for me, power was the last piece of the smart home puzzle.”
The one part of the puzzle that Dunnington does not install is solar, but he has no problem working with it.
“With smart power, we control all the electricity in the house, which is what we wanted to do,” he says. “Being an integrator, it’s easier for us from a skills standpoint to lock all the power down versus somebody that works for a solar or roofing company. Many times, we’ll have them set up the solar and then bring the loads into the battery storage. Then we program it and take it from there.
“With Savant Power, you can do the programming with an iPad, but we do more than just controlling — we engineer it to make sure that everything in the house is speaking the same language.”
That “whole-house, one-language” operation comes in handy during a power outage, letting the homeowner decide what products in the house receive power over the duration of the blackout, with pre-programmed adjustments that take place the longer the electricity is out. It will also manage the usage between stored solar electricity and generators, which in some California cities are limited by local laws.
While the power outage performance is certainly eye-catching, according to Dunnington, it is the day-to-day energy management that really makes a difference in the homeowners’ lives — particularly in California.
“Out here, we have peak hours, off-peak hours, and super-off-peak hours for electricity,” he explains. “From 12:00 AM to 6:00 AM is super-off-peak — the cheapest time for electricity because nobody’s using it — around 8 to 10 cents a kilowatt. During that time most people are charging their electric vehicles, but, for me, I’m filling my smart batteries. Then at 6:00 AM, when peak hours kick in and the price jumps to 60 to 70 cents a kilowatt, I’m shutting down the grid to my house and I’m using the batteries that I have filled overnight.
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“When the Sun comes up, we have solar on the house, and we get 14 kW of power. So, we’re using electricity but we’re also generating it, and then from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM it goes into off-peak rates. During that time, we utilize some of our saved power, unless it’s summertime and we’re using the AC, and it doesn’t have enough to keep us going. From 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM it is back to peak time and then it goes back to where we’re full circle at 12:00 AM.
“I put Savant Power in my own house last October, and prior to that my electrical bill had roughly 600 kW of peak hour usage and about 1700 kW of off-peak power. As soon as I added the two battery storage units, my peak usage dropped to 40 kW and my off-peak and super-off-peak went up to 2200 kW.
“You can imagine how exciting that is for people here. There’s something very satisfying when you get the opportunity to control your energy versus a company like San Diego Gas and Electric or Southern California Edison. You get that control back, and that provides a very confident feeling.”
Show and Sell
For Lightworks, Dunnington says that Savant Power was an easy product to integrate into the business because they already have licensed electricians on staff. For integrators where that is not the case, they will have to find an electrician to partner with before they can start selling and installing it. And although the electrician should be up on all laws and regulations for the area, Dunnington recommends integrators do their own research, as well.
“For integrators who are not sure if they are ready to go deep into Savant’s full micro-grid solution, Savant Power Modules are a critical first step to connecting smart home with smart power,” he says. “And Savant is building a network of solar and electrical partners that will work with integrators and make the combination of the smart home and smart grid seamless for the customer as well as the integrator.”
With the installation side settled, the sales team will need some assistance, which is where a demo area will play an important role. Sure, an explanation of the service Savant Power provides both with and without electricity is impressive, but builders and clients will need to see it to believe it, and that is why Lightworks added a section devoted to it in its showroom.
“We have a nice showroom here in San Diego, and I built a display that shows the whole Savant Power system,” explains Dunnington. “We put money into it knowing it was the right thing for us because it made sense on so many levels.
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“When architects and builders are designing a higher-end project, having the display available to show them Savant Power and what it looks like is very important because they can touch it and see it in action. Plus, we have my house hooked up and controlled through an iPad in there so they can see everything in my house running through Savant Power. It’s a great explanation of how the system works, and if we can educate the client correctly, it’s an easy sell at that point.”
Another selling point is that, with its ties to solar power, a portion of the Savant Power system can be paid for with rebates from the Federal government’s solar initiatives. “The controller on the Savant system that we do in a house is a Mac Mini, and some of those parts — such as the breakers — are part of that 30% tax credit, which most people don’t realize. It can be a powerful sales incentive.”
With all of that behind it, the biggest sales asset at Lightworks’ disposal is Dunnington’s enthusiasm for the product. “Before we put this in anything in our clients’ homes, we put it in ours,” he says. “I was one of the first people to beta test this whole system, and the installation went flawlessly and it works great.”
Plus, it looks pretty good, too. “The Savant Power storage units were well-engineered to be placed in the garage,” he concludes. “When you go into a garage you have roughly 15 to 18 inches on each side of the rails and the garage door, so Savant built the storage units at 12 inches to ensure that you could put them into those corners. Whether we like it or not, there’s a lot of stuff in the garage, but if you can slide those units into the two side-door slots, it makes things easier.
“And clients appreciate the higher-end look of it. A lot of times these systems with batteries and transfer switches and sub panels can look like an industrial commercial project. With the Savant Power system, I can make a beautiful-looking garage!”
