Jinsoo Han

More efficient home energy management system based on ZigBee communication and infrared remote controls

This paper describes more efficient home energy management system to reduce power consumption in home area. We consider the room easily controllable with an IR remote control of a home device. The room has automatic standby power cut-off outlets, a light, and a ZigBee hub. The ZigBee hub has an IR code learning function and educates the IR remote control signal of a home device connected to the power outlet. Then the power outlets and the light in the room can be controlled with an IR remote control. A typical automatic standby power cut-off outlet has a waiting time before cutting off the electric power. It consumes standby power during that time. To eliminate the waiting time, we turn off the home device and the power outlet simultaneously with an IR remote control through the ZigBee hub. This method actively reduces the standby power. The proposed HEMS provides easy way to add, delete, and move home devices to other power outlets. When a home device is moved to the different outlet, the energy information of the home device is kept consistently and seamlessly regardless of location change. The proposed architecture gives more efficient energy-saving HEMS.

Smart home energy management system including renewable energy based on ZigBee and PLC

As home energy use is increasing and renewable energy systems are deployed, home energy management system (HEMS) needs to consider both energy consumption and generation simultaneously to minimize the energy cost. This paper proposes a smart HEMS architecture that considers both energy consumption and generation simultaneously. ZigBee-based energy measurement modules are used to monitor the energy consumption of home appliances and lights. A PLC-based renewable energy gateway is used to monitor the energy generation of renewable energies. The home server gathers the energy consumption and generation data, analyzes them for energy estimation, and controls the home energy use schedule to minimize the energy cost. The remote energy management server aggregates the energy data from numerous home servers, compares them, and creates useful statistical analysis information. By considering both energy consumption and generation, the proposed HEMS architecture is expected to optimize home energy use and result in home energy cost saving.

Remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture based on ZigBee communication

This paper proposes remote-controllable and energy-saving room architecture to reduce standby power consumption and to make the room easily controllable with an IR remote control of a home appliance. To realize the proposed room architecture, we proposed and designed the automatic standby power cut-off outlet and a ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality. The proposed power outlet monitors the power consumption for the predetermined time and completely cuts off the power supply when the monitored power is below the threshold. This power outlet has a function of changing the threshold power, which enables any kinds of home appliances to be applied to the power outlet. To efficiently manage the power outlets and the lights, we proposed the ZigBee controller with IR code learning functionality. The ZigBee controller has several onboard buttons to wake up the power outlets and control the dimming light. By using IR code learning functionality, the ZigBee controller can assign a certain IR code of a remote control of a home appliance to the power outlet or the dimming light. A user can control the power outlets and the dimming light with an IR remote control of any home appliance. Our proposed room architecture provides the remote-controllable and energy-saving room.

Green Home Energy Management System through comparison of energy usage between the same kinds of home appliances

Home Energy Management System (HEMS) is a technology to reduce and manage home energy use. The feedback on energy consumption to energy users is known to be effective to reduce total energy use. A typical HEMS just shows the energy consumption of the whole home and home appliances. Users cannot figure out how efficient a home appliance is, compared to the others. So it is necessary to compare the energy usage of home appliances to that of the same kinds of home appliances. In this paper, we propose a green HEMS based on energy comparison.

User-friendly home automation based on 3D virtual world

Home automation refers to a system that is used to control devices around the home. These devices can include doors, lights, surveillance systems, and consumer electronics. A user can control a variety of home devices with the help of a home automation system. To provide mobility, a mobile phone-based home automation has been developed. As another approach toward home automation, an Internet-based home automation system has been proposed, providing a graphic user interface. However, these systems lack userfriendliness and are neither intuitive nor realistic. To improve the user-friendliness of the interface, a 3D view interface was designed. However, its level of realism was low. In this study, to provide a more realistic interface, a 3D virtual world is adopted as the user interface for a home automation system. Additionally, a home server is used as a controller for home devices. As an information exchange format between the virtual and the real world, a control protocol that works under a standardization process is introduced. With the help of a 3D virtual world, a user can control and monitor home devices via a user-friendly interface that works both intuitively and realistically anywhere and anytime through the Internet.

PLC-based photovoltaic system management for smart home energy management system

As energy consumption in residential areas is rising, residential homes have deployed a photovoltaic (PV) system to save energy cost. The PV system needs to be continuously monitored to maintain its appropriate performance. In addition, it is desirable to monitor each PV module because one abnormal PV module affects the whole PV system. In this paper, the power line communication (PLC) compliant with HomePlug is adopted to monitor each PV module. The system architecture is composed of three components: PLC modem, renewable energy gateway (REG), and smart device application. The PLC modems are deployed on each PV module and monitor it. The REG aggregates and stores the monitored data from the PLC modems and the inverter. The smart device application retrieves the stored data from the REG to inform users of the status of the PV system. Users can browse and figure out the PV system performance in detail. The proposed system is installed in the field that is composed of sixteen 210W PV modules and a 3kW inverter. This scheme will maintain the performance of a PV system and contribute to enhancing home energy management system.

Service-oriented power management for an integrated multi-function home server

A home server usually is an integrated system of communication, broadcast, game, media center, and home automation. It is a kind of a multi-function all-in-one system. The home server should be turned on for all day long because it plays a role of network hub, multimedia contents server, and home automation controller. Therefore it is necessary to reduce its power consumption to lower the operational cost. To achieve this power reduction, this paper proposes service-oriented power management method for an integrated multi-function home server. This method classifies the resources of the home server into small functional blocks according to the kind of service and turns on only the resources needed for the requested services. When a new service is requested only necessary resources are turned on. And when a service exit occurs, unnecessary resources are turned off. This power management greatly reduces a waste of power dissipation. We also present some scenarios utilizing this

User-friendly monitoring system for residential PV system based on low-cost power line communication

A photovoltaic (PV) system has been widely deployed in residential areas to reduce energy cost. However, it is not monitored in detail or managed in a user-friendly manner in many cases. Therefore, a PV monitoring system needs to provide both detailed monitoring of each PV module and a user-friendly way of access to the monitored data. In addition, the PV monitoring system needs to be low-cost to be widely deployed. To achieve these needs, this paper proposes a user-friendly PV monitoring system based on a low-cost power line communication (PLC). For cost reduction, the PLC module is developed without a communication modem. For detailed monitoring, the PLC modules are installed at each PV module; the data logger aggregates the monitored data of each PV module and the PV inverter. For userfriendly access, a smart app is used to show the aggregated data graphically. In the field test, the developed PV monitoring system is installed at a real PV system composed of sixteen 400 W PV module; users can figure out the status of the whole PV system through a smart device. This scheme is expected to reduce energy cost in residential areas by maintaining a PV system performance.

A study on the use cases of the smart grid home energy management system

This paper describes standard model for Home Energy Management System (HEMS). It is presently absence from the requirement of the service and standard model. Generally HEMS provides energy management consulting service based on digital home environments and defines the essential requirement. It also provides the guideline of the related technology development and infrastructure. We proposed the use cases and the communications requirement that component of devices and interface for home energy management system.

Proactive energy management system architecture interworking with Smart Grid

Most of the energy management systems only implement monitoring and statistics of energy data which is collected from smart meter or consumer electronics. Under these energy management systems, people should manually control each device to reduce energy consumption. Moreover, The Smart Grid Technology requires more complicated and smart energy management system such as demand response related energy load control, renewable energy management, micro power exchange system. This paper will focus on architecture of energy management system for interworking with smart grid system. We have already developed energy management system for green-home and green-building, which has various monitoring and analysis functions about power consumption of home-appliances and building facilities. We are going to implement the smart grid interworking functions based on architecture concept which introduced in this paper.