This case study highlights how Grid Connect partnered with Powder Watts to develop a smart energy management system powered by custom IoT technology. Faced with the challenge of controlling rooftop heat cables more efficiently, Powder Watts needed a reliable, data-driven solution that could operate in harsh conditions and deliver measurable energy savings.
Grid Connect stepped in to engineer the hardware, connectivity, and integration needed to bring their vision to life—demonstrating how custom IoT development can solve real-world problems and unlock long-term value for homeowners and businesses.
The High Cost of Inefficiency: Why Smarter Heat Cable Control Was Needed
Left unchecked, heavy snowfall on a roof can cause ice dams along the roof’s bottom edge.
When that happens, melted snow on the roof’s surface travels backward under shingles and into a structure. The resulting damage can quickly add up to tens of thousands of dollars.
Heat cables, when used correctly, can effectively clear channels through the snow along a roof’s edge, preventing this from happening. There are approximately 44 million runs of heat cable across the United States and the owners of those heat cables spend, on average, hundreds of dollars per month to protect their roof.
A Better Way To Heat
Theoretically, building or home owners can temporarily shut off the cables and save power once the snow and ice has melted. The challenge is knowing when heat cables have successfully melted drainage channels, and when to power the cables back on.
Park City, Utah-based Powder Watts wanted to create a solution to eliminate the guesswork required for switch-flipping owners. While solutions existed on the market, the Powder Watts team didn’t like the real-world performance of the existing home and business automation protocols like Zigbee and Z-Wave.
According to Thomas Clardy, founder and CEO of Powder Watts, a smart system - one relying on IoT technology - would have to employ protocols to effectively communicate data about when to power heat cables on and off.
Solving the Smart Switch Challenge
When Powder Watts approached Grid Connect, they had already developed a rooftop sensor and AI software to monitor snow and roof conditions. What they lacked was the ability to act on that data—to automatically power heat cables on or off based on sensor input and predictive analysis.
“Nobody made a long-range high-amp smart switch capable of monitoring energy,” says Clardy. “We didn’t want to run our system on W-iFi, so Grid Connect incorporated our long-range protocol leading to outstanding performance.”
Grid Connect’s team of IoT engineers responded with a custom hardware solution tailored for high-power applications. They developed two IoT-enabled smart switches:
- A 30-amp, 240-volt version for commercial installations
- A 120-volt version for residential applications
Both switches could be controlled through the Powder Watts mobile app and offered real-time energy monitoring, enabling granular control of individual heating segments. These smart components became a foundational part of the smart energy home solution, allowing users to cut energy consumption by up to 90% while maintaining full protection from ice dam damage.
Revolutionizing Communication with Proprietary Protocols
The design challenges didn’t end with switching hardware. To deliver a fully integrated smart home energy solution, the Powder Watts system needed seamless communication between five critical components:
- A rooftop smart sensor and camera to detect snow conditions
- A smart hub for sending and receiving data
- A smart switch to measure energy usage and control heating cables
- AI-driven logic for real-time, autonomous decision-making
- The Powder Watts mobile app for full customer insight and remote control
These elements had to communicate reliably across long distances, in harsh weather, and without Wi-Fi. While LoRaWAN is often used in long-range IoT applications, it didn’t offer the bandwidth required to handle the high-resolution images used by Powder Watts’s rooftop camera.
Instead, the team relied on Powder Watts’s proprietary communication protocol, designed specifically to meet these unique throughput and range demands. Grid Connect supported this integration by developing a proof-of-concept solar-powered smart camera, enabling efficient HD image transmission over long distances using the Powder Watts protocol.
Delivering Reliable Performance and Exceptional Savings
Ultimately, Grid Connect helped Powder Watts bring the most robust, commercially available IoT cable monitoring system to market - capable of withstanding up to -40 F, extreme summer heat and severe hail.
These innovations provide users full control and monitoring capabilities via the Powder Watts mobile app, ensuring reliable performance and significant energy savings. Users typically see a return on investment in 12-24 months.
“If you own a home or business and you’re spending $200 or more per month to power your heat cables, Powder Watts can reduce that by up to 90 percent,” notes Clardy.
Turn Your IoT Vision Into Reality
This collaboration with Powder Watts showcases Grid Connect’s full-service approach: from prototype development and protocol integration to final product launch. Whether you need smart home energy solutions, IoT-based predictive maintenance, or an entirely new connected product, we can help you bridge the gap from idea to market-ready innovation.
Contact Grid Connect today to learn how our custom IoT solutions process can help you design and deliver your next breakthrough product.
Discuss on X
Discuss on Reddit
Discuss on LinkedIn
