Energy Information Gateway for Home

Abstract

Energy conservation or energy management is the buzz word today and it’s a real necessity for today’s world, in order to maintain high economy growth rate. Smart Meter technology is the first step towards achieving this goal. This paper discusses a novel low-cost Home Energy Information Gateway (HEIG) solution which can provide the Smart Meter display and communication interface through a Set Top Box like gateway device on the television and offer a varied range of benefits to the consumers and utility providers. The proposed solution provides a real-time view of the energy consumption at home on the Home Television. In addition it can also provide daily, monthly and annual energy usage statistics along with a mechanism to provide alerts when the energy consumption exceeds certain pre-defined thresholds. By interfacing with the utility provider’s portal over the web, it can provide a mechanism to introduce dynamic tariff and in future, as intelligent electrical appliances become available, a means to control the energy consumption of home electrical appliances from the Home Television itself. The main value provided by the proposed solution lies in its low-cost and low-power, which is an important parameter for deployment in Developing Countries.