Klugit
Turning any water heater into a smart appliance
- 30+
- units in home pilots
- €130/yr
- saved per family
- 2 months
- to a validated PoC
Klugit is a startup on a mission to put families on the frontline of a clean-energy future — saving, storing and renewing energy at home.
With this project, Klugit wanted an easy-to-install retrofit that turns any electric water heater into a smart appliance: one that learns a household's habits and stops paying to heat water nobody is about to use.
Unboxing the retrofit kit — packaging made from ocean plastic.
Project stages
- 01
Problem
Every electric water heater wastes energy and money. Right after the last shower of the day, the boiler starts heating up again anyway — with nobody left to use the hot water. That waste can add up to 1.5 kWh a day.
- 02
Hypothesis
Is it possible to save energy in water heaters by applying artificial-intelligence mechanisms to an ordinary boiler?
- 03
Proof of concept
To find the technology needed to validate the concept, we built an electronics box we called KLU — the Klugit Lab Unit.
In just two months we were able to prove the energy-saving potential of the solution in the field.
- 04
Prototype
At this stage we worked two development branches in parallel: industrial design and electronics engineering, so the enclosure and the intelligence inside it could mature together.
- 05
Pilot project
So far we've delivered 30+ units to home users across three pilot projects.
Those households saved more than €130 a year on average, while shifting electricity consumption away from fossil-fuel-heavy periods on the grid.
In detail
