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Samsung Smart Home System demonstrated by KEPCO in Korea powered by SmartThings.
The above photo was taken at my visit to the KEPCO headquarters in Korea in October 2022 and is the
Samsung Smart Home, which is a partnership with KEPCO powered by SmartThings that was also acquired
by Samsung. It is a full interactive experience. It was highly configurable, customizable, controllable and
convenient. You may be wondering about the toilet in the photo, it is also connected and its energy use (yes,
it’s electric powered) is presented in the app along with the energy rate and the real time bill. For customers
in Jamaica with a smart meter connected to the JPS AMI network, you now have the ability for receiving energy
price signals, and the SMART home would be able to respond accordingly. A higher price would cause the
SMART home to reduce energy consumption and conversely, the lower price may cause it to be increased.
Homeowners would naturally modify their lifestyle and energy behaviour around these signals. Similarly,
the grid operator will be able to request energy to be supplied from SMART homes to manage the national
demand or to store excess energy.

For SMART homes to be a reality in Jamaica, organizations like the JDA need to provision future homes for
these services and standardize the ports and access. I recently toured one of the new high-rise residential
developments in Kingston and realized that we are still far from where we need to be. Whereas they made
provision for air conditioning such that the new homeowner can “plug and play” install without running any
new wires, there was no cold-water connection behind the refrigerator. It is a simple engineering design-miss
like this where you are forced to ask, what could have been the incremental unit cost to extend the plumbing
which is less than 10 feet away to behind where the refrigerator is? Similarly, the new home must be connected.
Therefore, conduits should be incorporated for wired and wireless throughout the home. Why can’t a home
be pre-wired for a home security system? Why can’t a new home have smart outlets for appliances and lights
delivered with the keys? Then again, there is no physical key for a SMART home.
Other challenges facing Smart Homes in Jamaica

Other concerns for smart homes in Jamaica include:
1. Higher construction costs – this is a challenge but also presents the opportunity to amortize the incremental
cost into a long-term mortgage.
2. Explosion of high-rise apartments and townhome complexes where it is difficult to incorporate individual
solar, storage and EV charging
3. Lack of physical space (square footage) for ample rooftop solar. A 1 kW rooftop solar PV system requires
approximately 100 square feet of shadow-free area. Additionally, the age and condition of some rooftops
make them unsuitable for rooftop solar.

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