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Casa Woody: The Zero Carbon Future Home

Capgemini
19 Dec 2019

Imagine living in a zero carbon footprint home that is smart enough to optimally use the power to run household appliances and deliver enough to the grid without crashing it. This is the vision of Casa Woody, a futuristic solar powered smart home prototype developed by the Capgemini Belgium team of Johnny Verhoeven, Peter Van Der Broght and Jorgen Van Mechelen.

Casa Woody is the successor of Casa Cardboard, a zero carbon footprint smart home designed by the Capgemini Belgium team for the Hackathon organized by Capgemini Netherlands. The theme of the hackathon was “Intelligent Automation” and the Belgium Casa Cardboard team comprising of Peter Van Der Borght, Daan Smiths, Pieter-Jan Beelen, Sam Gysels, Carlo Vanhoutte, Ujwala Patil, Julie Masri, Vishal Verma, and Johnny Verhoeven won the top prize. Casa Cardboard, as you guessed it, had a body designed from cardboard with solar panels for the roof and was connected to the AWS server.

The idea was to showcase the home that could generate its own electricity from the sun and release the extra to the grid. After the hackathon, the solar panels went back to the owner and casa Cardboard was recycled.

The idea of Woody

However, with the renewed interest Casa Woody was born. The body was more durable and made up of hardwood, the electronics were undertaken on PCB, solar panels were on the roof and the intelligent home was re-engineered for the SAP system. This permanent version was spearheaded by Johnny Verhoeven, Peter Van Der Borght, Jorgen Van Mechelen. This intelligent home was presented to multiple stakeholders in the Netherlands and Belgium and is currently managed by the APPS2 team.

A planet-friendly home

Casa Woody has an Arduino board that is able to read inputs like the lights on the sensor. The SAP run application program interface can gauge the solar input based on the weather report and can optimally use the energy generated by the solar panels. So, with high energy generation, Casa woody home will immediately encourage to utilize the maximum by lowering the refrigerator temperature, running the heater and more. This will help in effectively regulating the electricity output that can be delivered to the grid without shutting it down.

Right now Casa woody is a prototype, but smart, alternate energy homes are the need of the hour. So here’s hoping for it to be a reality. The author of this blog, Johnny Verhoeven is a passionate solar energy champion and has designed his own home to harness the energy of the sun.