Smart Home Energy Management System

With the development of smart grid technology, residents can schedule their power consumption pattern in their home to minimize electricity expense, reducing peak-to-average ratio (PAR) and peak load demand. The two-way flow of information between electric utilities and consumers in smart grid opened new areas of applications. In this chapter, the general architectures of the home energy management systems (HEMS) are introduced in a home area network (HAN) based on the smart grid scenario. Efficient scheduling methods for home power usage are discussed. The energy management controller (EMC) receives the demand response (DR) information indicating the Time-of use electricity price (TOUP) through the home gateway (HG). With the DR signal, the EMC achieves an optimal power scheduling scheme that can be delivered to each electric appliance by the HG.