How does the consumer get the best out of both solutions?
The Basis Smart Panel is a New Zealand-developed replacement for a traditional household switchboard. Instead of simply protecting electrical circuits, it continuously monitors, measures, and controls your home’s electricity use through connected hardware and a smartphone app. It’s designed for new builds and major renovations, although it can also replace an existing switchboard in many homes.
What it does
Some of its key capabilities include:
- Real-time energy monitoring – See how much power each circuit is using, helping identify expensive appliances or unexpected loads.
- Circuit-level control – Turn circuits on or off remotely through the app.
- Electrical safety – Built-in monitoring detects faults and abnormal electrical conditions beyond what a conventional switchboard provides.
- Automation – Schedule or automate loads to run during cheaper electricity periods.
- Solar, battery and EV ready – Designed to integrate with rooftop solar, home batteries and EV chargers, making future upgrades easier. See your solar and battery use in the app, and maximise self-consumption to reduce your energy bill.
Smart grid features
One of Basis’ more interesting goals is to make homes active participants in New Zealand’s electricity grid. The panel supports:
- Time-of-use electricity optimisation
- Ripple control
- Demand-response programmes
- Import and export metering for solar systems
These features could allow electricity retailers to offer lower prices in exchange for shifting loads like EV charging or water heating to off-peak periods. The New Zealand Electricity Authority is currently supporting trials of this technology.
The Basis Home app
The companion app connects over your home’s ethernet or Wi-Fi and provides:
- Live power consumption
- Historical energy usage
- Cost estimates
- Notifications of electrical faults
- Remote control of supported circuits
- Energy-saving recommendations
The app is included with the panel—there is no subscription fee for homeowners, and never will be.
Solar PV System
Solar PV Systems installed on residential roofs have become the norm in the last few years. The tech savvy consumers can now see that solar can save them money on their power bill. The return on investment is generally estimated
at 5-8 years.
For some people this ROI can be reduced even quicker. How can you do this? Well, there is a community-based platform available called Home Assistant; an open-source home automation platform. Many companies that make smart devices have integrated their smart devices with Home Assistant, providing insights and/or control for the devices. For example, Enphase, Fronius, Goodwe, Solis, Sungrow have native, official integrations available directly in Home Assistant for connecting solar inverters and smart meters.
For those devices that don’t have official integrations, the open-source community often steps in and creates the integration themselves. Have a search online to see if a Home Assistant integration is available for your inverter brand. If not, a custom integration can be made with a bit of tinkering.
Generally, the most power-hungry appliance in any home is the hot water cylinder. It can account for up to 40% of your power bill. Some solar installers will recommend you install a solar diverter to divert the free solar power that is being produced from going to the grid and instead directed to the hot water cylinder. But the installed cost of this device can be up to $1,800. With Basis and Home Assistant, you can automate the control of loads based on solar generation. For example, when enough power is being generated, turn on the hot water cylinder.
Setting up Home Assistant
Auto-discovery: Home Assistant often finds your inverter automatically on your local network.
Manual setup: Go to Settings, choose Devices & services, click Add Integration, and search for your inverter brand
IP address: Enter your local inverter IP address or hostname when prompted to link the device.
The other key integration in the library is the Basis Smart Panel, through the official integration. Now you can monitor and control appliances in your home to get the most out of the free power being produced. All in real-time, automatically, at no extra cost. The set up process is the same as above for the inverters.
You will now have the tools to save thousands of dollars on your annual power bill by utilising the free power being produced by your Solar PV System and the market leading technology of the Basis Smart Panel.
What’s coming next
Basis is now working directly with inverter and battery manufacturers to give the Basis panel native communication with your solar system—no Home Assistant required.
Solar generation, battery storage, and circuit controls will all live in a single app. This will enable heavy loads like EV charging and hot water to automatically schedule themselves around your real-time energy production and storage.
Backup power will be handled directly by the panel, turning outage protection into a simple app setting rather than an expensive rewire. For customers, this will deliver a faster system payback, one less box on the wall, and a home that effortlessly runs on its own power.
For more information about Solar PV Solutions and the Basis Smart Panel, please contact your local Powerbase branch.
You can also visit wearebasis.com
