Residential Remote Load Scheduling and Control for Smart Homes with LabVIEW Interface

The active involvement of residential consumers in smart home initiatives is a key topic for the realization of the smart grid. In this paper we propose a method to accomplish residential remote load scheduling and control through a novel algorithm realized with a LabVIEW interface. Therefore, LabVIEW programming is used in order to transform two normal plugs into smart ones. The status of each plug (on/off) is defined beforehand by the end user through a user friendly interface. Each step of the program contains information regarding the status of the controllable plug and its duration. The program can start and end at any time and its duration can be fixed by the user. We created a testbed to apply the proposed method to a lab experiment, where two load consumption profiles have been used and the respective energy diagram has been derived. The results show that this technique is effective for load scheduling and control, since it can determine the exact time moments of the loads operation. The method can be applied not only to smart home and home energy management applications but also to applications where remote control is required by external actors outside the house premises. The concept is shown to remain the same.