NXP and geo Team up for New Matter-certified HEMS

One of the most important aspects of the smart home is the energy management system. Long seen as a crucial factor to any smart home platform, the Matter smart home standard has added improved home energy management system (HEMS) provision with its most recent specification updates.

A new HEMS from NXP Semiconductors and Green Energy Options (styled as “geo”) has been launched. Dubbed SeeZero, the collaboration should in theory combine geo’s energy management experience and NXP’s expertise in intelligent, secure, and efficient microcontrollers.

SeeZero is a Matter-certified HEMS that is intended to deliver seamless connectivity with smart devices such as thermostats, lighting systems, appliances, and any other energy management hardware around the home. At this time, we're aware of a themostat and a display with the SeeZero branding.

Why Smart Heating Matters

With a HEMS system installed – typically with a bare minimum of a radiator thermostat and wall mounted controller – you can enjoy remote control over your home’s heating.

(In the UK and Europe, OpenTherm enables the management of boilers.)

The presence of Matter within such a system means that the HEMS and its integration with your smart home is future-proofed, and interoperability with other systems affords interesting automations and scenes. For example, using presence sensors to trigger a radiator or heater to reach a specific temperature when someone enters and remains in a room.

“Home energy management is a key driver for consumers to adopt smart home technology,” said Tobin Richardson, President and CEO of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which oversees the Matter standard. “Matter 1.4 expands the standard’s energy management capabilities by adding support for new device types, enabled by member companies like NXP, helping to expand the Matter ecosystem so consumers can more effectively manage home energy costs and consumption.”

Optimizing Energy Use

NXP’s microcontrollers will be at the heart of the geo HEMS system. SeeZero’s Matter heating management smart home hardware aims to offer high performance and low power consumption. As is demanded by Matter certification, these devices are considered secure, utilizing Matter’s 256-bit encryption while managing energy requirements within the home, optimizing usage, and recording consumption data to provide actionable insights - for example, identifying devices that should be replaced.

Steve Cunningham is CEO of geo: "Consumers face a dilemma: they want to make the best of the ‘smartness’ in the devices they buy to make their homes as comfortable and convenient as possible, but they also need to keep their energy costs low. The autonomous, invisible orchestration of energy usage, powered by Matter, is critical to solving that challenge and NXP has been a key collaborator for geo in our journey to deliver that orchestration and move the world closer to net-zero. The breadth and functionality of their Matter solutions and ability to work hand-in-glove with our developers to integrate those solutions into our design was fundamental to geo achieving the critical balance of capability, complexity and cost needed to bring our revolutionary SeeZero HEMS solution to market."

Matter 1.4 Making Smart Energy Management Possible

It’s clear that the revisions to the specification introduced in Matter 1.4 are the driving factor behind SeeZero, along with other smart home energy management systems. The Tado X range, for example, is available in the UK and Europe, and includes temperature sensors and a heat pump controller.

Expected to release in 2025, the geo SeeZero HEMS devices will, if correctly implemented, help your smart home to use less power and lower energy bills, reducing your carbon footprint. NXP will be demoing its energy management solutions at CES 2025.