IoT for Energy Efficiency and Demand Management

With the advancement of communication technology, nowadays most of the energy appliances are enabled with communication protocols. This communication protocol of appliances (Things) is known as the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT has huge potential to change the way we manage things. Household appliances are not monitored properly, hence some of the appliances are left unnecessarily in standby mode, some appliances are being run on a peak time while could be run on an off-peak period. This unmonitored power consumption constitutes a large chunk of energy wastage. If properly monitored and scheduled, a significant amount of energy can be saved. IoT can help us monitor and control the appliance effectively and efficiently. The paper presents an IoT based energy management system (IoT-EMS) to improve energy efficiency and demand-side management by real-time online energy behaviour monitoring, and intelligently scheduling appliances to reduce energy consumption while maintaining the highest level of user comfort. The proposed IoT-EMS utilizes data analytic and optimization techniques for providing efficient appliance scheduling and demand-side management. A network of sensors of appliances and various environmental variables using Raspberry-pi has been developed to monitor and control appliances. The Raspberry-pi which is a data acquisition and control unit is also connected to the cloud server via the home WIFI network. The cloud serves as the database and provides stigmatization as well as algorithm support for the Raspberry-pi control center. The comparative analysis of a typical household load profile shows that the propose IoT-EMS helps saving energy by intelligently switching appliance based on user presence and need. It also presents scheduling of the shiftable loads which simultaneously increase energy efficiency by operating shift-able load at low-cost energy period and reduce network demand.