Skip to main content

Leviton’s Wi-Fi Load Center and Smart Circuit Breakers give your home a brain

Is your home ready for a brain transplant? Adding individual smart plugs is quick, easy, and inexpensive, but the benefits are limited to one plug at a time. Leviton‘s new Load Center and Smart Circuit Breakers go deep in your home’s infrastructure, connecting your entire home to the internet and the cloud. Leviton’s intelligent home electrical service was introduced at the 2019 NAHB International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas.

Installing a new load center, commonly called an electrical panel, isn’t a DIY task. You’ll need a qualified electrician for the installation to protect your home and anyone who ever enters it. The load center is a metal electrical service box that connects to a local utility power source and distributes electrical current throughout the home via individual circuits.

The new Leviton Load Center connects to the internet and the Leviton Cloud via Wi-Fi and your home router. Leviton’s new Smart Circuit Breakers install in the load center the same as in regular electrical panels. Each Smart Circuit Breakers also connects to the internet via a wireless or Ethernet-connected data hub.

With a Wi-Fi-connected Leviton Load Center and a full complement of Smart Circuit Breakers installed, you can use the My Leviton smartphone app to monitor power usage to view usage trends and electrical bill. You also can configure alerts for each circuit breaker to you’ll be notified if, when, and why an individual circuit breaker has tripped.

Each circuit in the Load Center can be customized with one of four different circuit breaker options. Users can select from standard breakers, AFCI breakers, GFCI breakers, or AFCI/GFCI Dual-Function breakers. For example, GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) breakers cut electrical power in one-fortieth of a second if a fault in an electrical ground occurs. Ungrounded circuits can destroy appliances, start fires, and injure or even kill people.

If you think of adding smart plugs and smart hubs to our homes as installing a layer of intelligent mini appliances, installing a connected Load Center and Smart Circuit Breakers is a whole house brain transplant.

“Today’s homebuyers want a smarter home and we’ve answered the call with the Leviton Load Center,” said Daryoush Larizadeh, Leviton president and COO. “The enhanced version of the Leviton Load Center is a groundbreaking milestone in our long history of innovation, integrating intelligence and efficiency into the nerve center of the home. It is easy to install for contractors, provides home builders with a smart, safe and aesthetically pleasing product for their customers, and simplifies the daily lives of homeowners.”

Updated February 20 with additional information about circuit breaker options. 

Editors' Recommendations

Bruce Brown
Digital Trends Contributing Editor Bruce Brown is a member of the Smart Homes and Commerce teams. Bruce uses smart devices…
TVs want to be the center of your smart home, but does that really make sense?

It's certainly exciting to wander the CES show floor, eyes peeled for crazy new technologies that you couldn't possibly have imagined. What's more exciting, though -- at least for us -- are the technologies that aren't wild concept cars or giant race-ready robots, but products and innovations primed to make an impact on our lives in the here and now.

For years, the dream of a fully realized "smart home" has pervaded CES exhibitions. Everything can be controlled by voice now, and the idea is that connecting every appliance in your house to a single network will make life simpler, allowing you more time to spend doing things you love. At least, that's the tagline.
TV as smart home hub
Interestingly, televisions have largely eluded the smart home bubble -- not that they aren't "smart" (they have been for years). But in a sea of Alexa-enabled mirrors, voice-controlled windows, and smart smoke detectors with built-in speakers, little attention has been paid to the potential role of the TV in a smart home -- until now. This year, big names like Samsung, LG, and Hisense have added digital assistants to their TV lineups in hopes that you'll buy one and run your smart home through it. Is that feasible, though?

Read more
Protect your home with Securifi’s mesh Wi-Fi and smart home combo
Securifi

The company known for bringing you secure Wi-Fi now wants to secure your whole home as well. On Tuesday, November 7, smart home firm Securifi, known best for its line of routers and Wi-Fi range extenders, debuted a new product line on Indiegogo. Meet the Almond Guard, a self-arming home security system that claims to be the "world's most intelligent home security system," integrated mesh Wi-Fi and a smart home hub.

Thanks to this combination, Almond Guard is said to detect your smartphone's Wi-Fi, and use this information to determine whether or not it ought to arm your system. That means that even if you forget to set your defenses when you leave the home, the Almond Guard can do so automatically. Similarly, when you return home from a long day, you won't have to fiddle with a security code or worry about disarming your system with a key fob -- the Almond Guard will instantly disarm itself once you walk through the door (provided you've got your smartphone in hand).

Read more
Honeywell’s Smart Home Security System gives you an easy way to guard your home
honeywell smart security system

Keeping yourself and your loved ones safe shouldn't be a complicated endeavor, especially with the plethora of smart home devices on the market today. But as useful as many of these products may be, setup can sometimes be something of a doozy. Not so with the self-installed Smart Home Security System from Honeywell, an Alexa-enabled defense system that just about any homeowner can figure out and use.

This all-in-one, self-monitored, and most importantly, easily installed security system revolves around an intelligent, portable camera station that promises to help you keep an eye on just about anything thanks to its 145-degree, 1080p HD camera. There is also a speaker, microphone array, and additional indoor and outdoor sensors that you can add to your doors, windows, and more.

Read more