Tiago Bandeira
Klugit CEO 

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Where others had failed in the past, Make-IT was able to execute our vision brilliantly. With strong experience in R&D, entrepreneurship and prototyping, they are a benchmark in the European ecosystem. They started as our suppliers, evolved into partners, and will stay as friends.

#1 PROBLEM

It’s a known fact that any electric water heater wastes energy and money. For instance, right after a shower, the boiler starts heating up even if it is the last shower of the day. Since the boiler´s insulation is not perfect, it will lose energy over time.
This wasted energy can represent up to 1.5 kWh per day!
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#2 HYPOTHESIS

Is it possible to save energy in water heaters by applying Artificial Intelligence mechanisms to normal boilers? 
It would allow the system to learn the user’s water consumption pattern and optimize the heatings to save energy and money.​

#3 PROOF OF CONCEPT

To find the technology required to validate the concept, we developed an electronic box that we call KLU (Klugit Lab Unit). This is an IoT device that collects data from several different sensors and sends all of it to our cloud system. Besides that, it also allows to turn OFF/ON the water heater. In this stage, neither the cost nor the design was taken into account.
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To validate the hypothesis, we distributed 10 KLUs in different houses and public spaces collecting valuable information about the dynamics of the system. In just 2 months we were able to prove the energy-saving potential of the solution.

#4 PROTOTYPE

​At this stage, we worked in 2 parallel development branches: design and engineering. Each area had several iteration cycles of specification, prototype, and validation to test assumptions of how the product should work and look.

​Engineering

In the engineering topic, our main focus was to ensure that the product is reliable, cost-effective, and safe. This means that from the beginning we built the engineering specifications based on the functional and regulatory requirements. Then, we did several prototyping cycles both in hardware and software. On the hardware side, we prototyped all the components including the electronics, the plastics, the springs, the cables, and even the assembly process, all to guarantee that it is assemblable. The process starts with the creation of the models and the electronics, each in the respective digital tools, to validate as much as we can. Only then we move on to materialization processes, using fast prototyping tools. This results in very efficient prototyping cycles. The software part goes in parallel. Starting by validating libraries and building the basic firmware architecture and then going up in the software layers and levels of abstraction. In every prototyping cycle, the number of features increases along with the system’s complexity.
At the end of this stage, we had a stable cloud platform capable of handling up to 100 devices which include all databases, frontend, and backend interfaces, and the mobile App​

Design

The design phase is all about human interaction, how it looks and how it feels. We started by defining and building the user’s journey: the unboxing, the installation, and the product setup. Then, we started with the high-level sketches, defining the form factor and size of the plug, and working on the smart sensor’s usability and aesthetics. We did a lot of prototyping in the smart sensor, given its impact on the final design. The focus was to obtain something easy to install and that at the same time assured a rigid connection to the hotter pipe. ​

At the end of the iterations, a fully functional prototype came up, ready to be installed and used.

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#5 PILOT PROJECT

Pilot projects are the real scenario test, so we put the Klugit plug into the wild. So far we delivered 30+ units to home users, inside 3 pilot projects.

One of them is going on in Azores with Azores electricity provider - EDA with amazing results. We were able to save more than 130 EUR/year per family and, at the same time, shift electricity consumption away from fossil fuel-based periods to more renewable available ones.
In these pilots, we are validating the product as a whole: its usability, its reliability, the packaging, all the infrastructure, and the mobile app. 

KLUGIT WEBPAGE

Kickstarter (SOON)

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