A gateway sensor network architecture for home energy management

As the world energy crisis continues to burden our natural resources, it is imperative that current technologies be employed to make energy usage more efficient. In this paper, an intelligent residential home energy management system is discussed. A Master Energy Controller was developed to forecast future power demand based on user's life style and environmental/social factors affecting power consumption; this controller uses a branch and bound scheduling algorithm for managing appliance runtime schedules. Further, time-of-use pricing is employed to close the loop between the residential customer and the utility company. The focus of this paper is on how the appliance network architecture and master controller can link to the outside world through the internet. A gateway architecture is used for this interface and details of the communication process and message configurations are presented. This architecture provides a simple, yet powerful approach in linking each intelligent residential energy management system to an energy grid with the goal of improving energy usage.