Abstract
The high energy required by home appliances (like white goods, audio/video devices and
communication equipments) and air conditioning systems (heating and cooling), makes our
homes one of the most critical areas for the impact of energy consumption on natural
environment. Smart homes hold the potential for increasing energy efficiency, decreasing
costs of energy use, decreasing the carbon footprint by including renewable resources, and
transforming the role of the occupant. To deliver a sustained economic growth rate and to
meet life time energy needs of all citizens, Nigeria needs to increase its primary energy
supply by about 5 times and electricity generation capacity about 6 times. As a result energy
service demand growth rates will keep on increasing because of accelerated industrialization,
urbanization, and an emerging consumer society. A home energy management (HEM) system
has the potential to enable demand response (DR) implementation for residential customers.
The
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.0 BACKGROUND INFORMATION OF THE STUDY
Today, humanity can be classified as living in a “machine society” where technological
tools are predominantly at different levels, interfacing in the day–to-day activity of man.
These livelihood activities constitute and deliver economic, social and political benefits and
potential risks to the survivability of nations –especially developing nations like ours.
In recent years, several research efforts have been carried out to design the so called smart
home. One of the most attractive potentiality of this kind of environment is the possibility to
reduce the energy consumption managing intelligently the devices into the house.
Over the years due to burst in world population and increasing energy needs energy
consumptions are increasing year after year, and if effective energy saving policies are not
adopted, in a few years from now they will double with respect to population growth level.
The residential sector accounts for an increasing percentage of the total consumption which is
now above 27.5% (source Earth trends). Indeed, in other sectors like the industrial one the
introduction of strategies for the reduction of energy consumption have been stimulated by
the urgent need to improve production efficiency, while residential users have a low
awareness of the problem and usually lack of tools for measuring and optimizing the energy
consumption of their daily activities. The top four residential end-uses of energy (as a
percentage of primary energy) are: space heating (26.4% of total primary energy end use),
space cooling (13% of total primary energy end use), water heating (12.5% of total primary
energy end use), and lighting (11.6% of total primary energy end use). These predictions
have recently increased the interest of the research community as well as of the industry
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world in the use of new generation home automation systems for energy saving. The general
goal is to use monitoring and control devices to measure in real time the energy consumption
of home appliances and to set them to low power modes when possible in order to save
energy. Moreover, the information exchange between the home automation system and the
energy utility through a data communication network allows to improve the efficiency in
energy production and to stimulate a wise energy use with differentiated tariffs per time
period.
In this paper, we present an integrated system for intelligent energy management at home
currently under development within the European project AIM. In particular we focus on the
role played by wireless sensor networks to automatically control home appliances (mainly
devices used for the space heating/cooling, lighting) according to the user’s habits. The main
function enabled by the sensor network is user profiling. User profiling process includes
basically two procedures: a mechanism for recording some events that can characterize the
way in which users interact with the home1.1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
The need to efficiently manage the electricity supply and reduce the cost of power consumption
by consumers has over the years been the bane of electricity companies, the use of high end
home appliances that increase the load profile of a home many a times are the cause for high
billing tariffs, our energy management methods are obsolete and not efficient. We tend to leave
appliances on when they may necessarily not be needed or leave the home with all lights and
cooling or heating systems on, all these as described stretch the span of these appliances and
increase our billing package, therefore the need for a system can effectively manage our
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electricity consumptions based on individual preferences and device settings, these as would
be seen at the end of these paper will reduce the overhead of energy consumption.
1.2 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The significance of this study cannot be overemphasized as it profits and provides improved
energy management schemes. The implementation of this design will reduce billing overhead
and prolong the life span of home appliances. The use of sensor applications and a processor
promotes research development in embedded systems applications power management and
consumer satisfaction.
1.3 PURPOSE OF STUDY
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The aim of this project is to design and implement a system that will achieve Home Energy
Management by doing the following:
1. Controlling of electrical home appliances like the light bulb, fans and high powered
equipment is on such as AC etc.
2. Controlling the intensity of light bulb i.e. by been able to different between night and
day, darkness and light etc.
3. Temperature differentiation to turn OFF or ON the AC
4. Current consumption management
5. Motion detection.1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
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The scope of this project is to design and construct a system interfaced with a microcontroller
unit, a motion sensor, a temperature transducer, a light transducer, a real time clock (RTC) and
a current sensor to control two home appliances: an air conditioning system (AC) and a light
bulb. Whose operating parameters are inputted via a keyboard with a LCD to perform the
objectives of the project as discussed.