Lithium battery packs are becoming more and more integrated into the lives of ordinary families. Although lithium battery packs entered households later than wired communication networks and various smart home products that followed, their product positioning is not surprisingly more inclined towards smart homes.
1. Development trend of lithium battery packs:
The typical application scenario for lithium battery packs to enter households is home energy storage. Since 2019, areas affected by power shortages (Africa) or high electricity prices (Europe) have begun to introduce home energy storage solutions. From the beginning, which only had simple charging and discharging switches, home energy storage lithium battery packs have gradually developed with LCD screens, Bluetooth communications, WiFi communications, access to cloud platforms and other powerful functions. In the future, it is expected that the cloud platform will be further developed to realize the further real-time monitoring function of battery packs by wired communications (PON) and wireless communications (4G LTE/5G NSA). Its product positioning is getting closer and closer to household appliances, and even the sales channels have shifted from special channels to shopping malls.
In addition, AI-based intelligent voice control is also expected to be gradually introduced into lithium battery packs.
Going further, deep learning based on AI will further play the application advantages of lithium battery packs
2. The similarities and differences between lithium battery packs and smart homes:
Smart home products cover a wide range, such as various household appliances, home intranet products, entertainment equipment, and even wooden or pure metal products that were originally completely unrelated to electricity consumption can also achieve a better application experience by adding motors and intelligent control systems. All these smart home products have the characteristics of electricity consumption, electronic control, network access, and unified communication protocols. At present, lithium battery packs have all the hardware foundations except for the unified communication protocol and access to home gateways.
3. Lithium battery packs should be integrated into smart homes:
Advantages: Lithium battery packs can be used as home backup power supplies. The integration with smart homes can better realize its power supply advantages and even coordinate the order of electricity consumption within the home to maximize the efficiency of electricity consumption. In addition, the integration of lithium battery packs into smart homes can also avoid the inconvenience caused by multiple monitoring of internal facilities in the home, and realize ALL IN ONE visual management in the home.
Obstacles: The main obstacle to the integration of lithium battery packs into smart homes is that it is difficult to adapt to unified communication protocols and battery pack control/monitoring has its own unique control logic. These are not yet included and mastered by the current mainstream smart home standardization organizations such as the IEC and IEEE. I believe that even if the standardization organizations begin to formally consider their inclusion, it is difficult to achieve effective technical standardization and integration in a short period of time due to factors such as the lack of giant companies in the industry and the non-standard development of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Although it is currently difficult to integrate lithium battery packs into smart homes, based on the development experience of the comprehensive communications and 3C industries, the final result will still be able to achieve final integration. However, this cycle may be longer, such as 3-5 years. Unless a new application of a battery pack brings a popular new experience.
This is the first one.
