Design of a smart socket for smart home energy management systems

As the world sees a transition away from fossil fuel technologies, there has been a driving market for the safe and smart consumption of electricity. Effective energy usage at the residential side is a huge potential for energy saving and power load balancing. This paper presents a comprehensive study on the Home Energy Management System (HEMS) and a low-cost smart socket for the applications of HEMS. This paper also introduces household electrical devices modelling and HEMS scheduling strategies. Case studies showed a satisfying performance on the real time electricity price prediction and HEMS optimal scheduling models. Finally, the proposed smart socket system was fabricated, and experimental results showed the designed smart socket can be fully utilized for monitoring and controlling home electrical devices.