March 2022

Page 22

n Building Green

As electric heat pumps, smart homes, electric vehicles, and micro-grids advance, we’re all electronics engineers. By Bruce Nagy and varied skills will be needed. We may be in the mechanical business, but we need to know about electricity, electronics, buildings that are both self-contained and part of microgrids, micro-grids that are both islanded and part of the global energy matrix.

Smart buildings

Johnson Controls' press event at the 2022 AHR Expo covered the company’s “Connected World” strategy, new wireless smart home devices, and new AI-enabled preventive maintenance.

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Plumbing & HVAC – March 2022

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When I was a child, there were only a few large TV networks and newspapers. As the years passed these transformed into thousands of cable TV channels, and then into online networks, like YouTube and Netflix and thousands of internet channels. Media fragmentation created options, permutations, combinations, and demanded a different skill set for consuming it. Our energy and building technologies are now transitioning from the old, centralized way to decentralized, diversified ways. New

During the AHR Expo in Las Vegas this February and in preparation for CMPX in Toronto in March, Google has been doing media interviews about its Nest Pro Program, part of its continuing vision to become a key part of every human family and business on Earth. “We see the thermostat as the centre of any smart home and we have millions of Nest installations,” says Gene Lanois, Nest Pro director. His pitch is that contractors who sign up can be digitally connected as the installer of the system, whenever service is needed. Smart home technology is expected to grow more than 13 per cent each year, from $126 billion this year to about $208 billion in 2026, when there will be nearly 600 million users, about one quarter of the world’s buildings. The largest and most lucrative market is North America, which is already Continued on page “24” www.plumbingandhvac.ca

2022-03-03 6:06 PM


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