Optimal home energy management system with mixed types of loads

This paper presents a novel home area energy management system (HEMS) for smart homes with different load profiles installed with photovoltaic generation, energy storage, and DC demand. The developed HEMS is shown to optimize the utilization of local renewables while minimizing energy waste between AC and DC conversions and between storage charging and discharging. Previous studies on HEMS have not considered the impact of load types. In this study, the performance of the proposed HEMS is demonstrated on different smart homes with and without electric heating. A comparative study is carried out to investigate battery behavior, characteristics of AC and DC conversion, and benefits that customers receive. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted to discuss the effects from varied energy storage capacities, AC/DC conversion efficiencies, and PV output. The results show that cost reduction in energy bills can be greatly impacted by load profiles, and customers with electric heating load coupled with sufficiently large energy storage would receive the most reduction in their energy bills.