The world is convening at CES 2024 to get its first look at the tech that’s coming to a home near you in the near future. If there’s one thing that unites the new tech CNET has seen so far this year — from the giant TVs to the robot vacuum cleaner that steams your floors to the super fast ice cream maker — it’s electricity.
Electricity keeps all your tech running, but it’s also more of a focus itself this year. If 2024 is the year you take control of your home’s electricity, here’s the tech we’ve seen so far at CES that might help you do it.
A whole home backup battery you can take with you
EcoFlow had the Delta Pro Ultra loaded up on a cart at CES so you could wheel it around. It’s surprisingly easy to move a battery that weighs nearly 200 pounds.
The world of backup batteries has exploded in variety the last few years. Other companies have introduced their competitors to Tesla’s well-known Powerwall battery, while the field of smaller, portable power stations is even more crowded. EcoFlow, a company that’s made some of CNET’s favorite portable power stations, introduced a new battery model that aims for the middle ground between portable and whole home backup.
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When paired with its Smart Home Panel Pro 2, EcoFlow’s Delta Pro Ultra power station can provide power to your home, or be unplugged and wheeled away for energy on the go. EcoFlow touts an easier set up — you only need to have the smart panel professionally installed — and, unlike most home backups, which are permanent, if you move you can take the EcoFlow with you. That can save you in installation costs and keep you from having to buy a new battery at your new place. It’s another step toward more reliable and flexible energy use at home.
Control your home’s power with the push of a button
Savant’s smart energy system allows you to switch your home from on-grid to off-grid with a tap.
Savant is one of several companies that gives you insight into and control over how your home uses energy. Through sensors and controllers installed in your breaker box, Savant’s system lets you see where power — from your solar panels, your battery or the grid — is flowing. With newly introduced features, controlling that flow is easier than ever.
Modes and scenes are customizable configurations of what’s turned on or off in your house. Modes like “eco mode” prioritize using power from your solar panels, while “storm watch” ensures your battery is topped up in case of an outage. Scenes can be set to turn off all but necessary circuits when you’re away from work or to power certain circuits during one season or another. Changing all that with the push of a button makes saving energy all that much more convenient.
A power station with swappable batteries and a cooler that makes ice
The battery packs in the Bluetti AC180T portable power station are hot-swappable, so you can just take one of these things out of the station while it’s operating.
Bluetti has made some of CNET’s favorite portable energy products, like power stations and solar panels, since we’ve been testing them over the last few years. The company is at CES this year demonstrating a few concept products its hoping to sell in the future.
One is a portable power station with a twist. Rather than one battery stuck inside the walls of the power station, the AC180T has battery packs you can swap in and out, while the power station is running your devices. This could make for even more flexible charging on the go. CNET’s Jon Reed said swapping the batteries was “weirdly fun to do.” The AC180T has an energy storage capacity of 1,433 watt-hours (or about 1.4 kilowatt-hours.)
Those batteries will be useful in other Bluetti devices, too, like the MultiCooler portable fridge. The fridge can keep things cool or downright frigid, from 68 to -4 degrees Fahrenheit. What’s more, it has a built in ice maker. Whether that’s strictly necessary in a portable fridge is probably up for debate, but you can imagine the device making for some truly luxurious camping. Bluetti is planning to crowdfund the devices development with a Indiegogo campaign in February.
Stained glass that generates electricity
Think you know what solar panels look like? This thing is capturing the energy of light.
CES is great for finding odd-but-cool little gadgets and the solar sector is no exception. Japanese solar company inQs is promoting its transparent solar technology with a range of solar powered, see through gadgets, including a silicon quartz crystal (pictured above) that can generate photovoltaic electricity. A company representative told CNET’s Jon Reed its technology could be deployed in windows, too, both transparent and stained.
Because transparent solar tech is still emerging and not yet widely deployed, the challenge of recycling them doesn’t loom as large as it does from the more traditional opaque, black or blue panels you see on roofs. Still, inQs says its tech, built on silicon quartz, is easier and safer to recycle and it includes no rare earth materials.
A heat pump that can keep pace in the cold
Bosch says its new IDS Ultra cold-climate heat pump can meet a home’s heating needs when the outside temperature drops as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heating and cooling a home is often its biggest energy related expense. Heat pumps are the efficient, electric heating and cooling solution of the future as they are efficient and can be powered by clean energy sources. One ding against them is their performance in cold climates, though as the technology improves, heat pumps are performing better and better below zero.
Bosch’s new heat pump, the IDS Ultra, is the company’s first heat pump designed for cold-weather performance. Unveiled on the CES floor this year, the IDS Ultra can keep your house warm down to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-15 Celsius) and keep working down to minus-13 degrees F (minus-25 Celsius). The Bosch model joins others from companies like Daikin, Midea, Johnson Controls, Lennox International, Carrier, Trane and Rheem that have passed the first stage of the Department of Energy’s Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge.
Moisture farming in the 21st century
The Genesis Systems WaterCube is a big steel box that literally pulls water from the air.
It sounds like tech from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but you might soon be able to pull water right from the air. The WC-100 WaterCube from Genesis Systems is an 800 pound machine that can harvest 100 gallons of water per day at 80 degrees F and 50% humidity, though the company says it can work all the way down to below 10% humidity. (It should get about 200 pounds lighter before it reaches the market, the company says.)
The WC-100 WaterCube could be useful if your water supply is disrupted or to offset your water bill. You’d have to shave a lot of that water bill to recoup the cost though, which sits at a whopping $20,000.
Check out all the coolest, cutting-edge new products at CES 2024 so far.