A novel Smart Home Energy Management system: Cooperative neighbourhood and adaptive renewable energy usage

摘要

Energy usage optimization in Smart Homes is audcritical problem: over 30% of the energy consumption of theudworld resides in the residential sector. Usage awareness andudmanual appliance control alone are able to reduce consumptionudby 15%. This result could be improved if appliance control isudautomatic, especially if renewable sources are present locally.udIn this paper, a Smart Home Energy Management system thatudaims at automatically controlling appliances in groups of smartudhomes belonging to the same neighborhood is proposed. Notudonly is electric power distribution considered, but also renewableudenergy sources such as wind micro-turbines and solar panels.udThe proposed strategy relies on two algorithms. The Cost SavingudTask Scheduling algorithm is aimed at scheduling high-powerudcontrollable loads during off-peak hours, taking into account theudexpected usage of the non-controllable appliances such as fridge,udoven, etc. This algorithm is run whenever a new need of energyudfrom a controllable load is detected. The Renewable SourceudPower Allocation algorithm re-allocated the starting time ofudcontrollable loads whenever surplus of renewable source power isuddetected making use of a distributed max-consensus negotiation.udPerformance evaluation of the algorithms tested proves that theudproposed approach provides an energy cost saving that goesudbetween 35% and 65% with reference to the case where noudautomatic control is used.