Building a Flexible Energy Management System with LonWorks Control Network

To effectively improve the efficiency of energy supply, quantification is required to determine its significance in our daily lives. Building an energy management system to monitor and acquire information such as energy supply and environmental factors is a necessary task for the quantification of energy consumption. We chose to build the energy management system with LonWorks control network because of its network flexibility capable of achieving the desired flexible structure and effective management. This system is divided into data processing, transmission, recording, and man-machine interface; it was developed using LonWorks control network, microprocessor, MS SQL database, and web-based interface. Our goal was to build a system with flexible expansion capabilities that provides energy monitoring services. We designated general household hot water supply systems as our research subjects, and based on which we built a household hot water supply management system. After attaching the system to solar energy water heaters and gas water heaters, we recorded and presented the level of energy consumption required to sustain the normal supply of hot water, as well as information on the timing of heating, user status, environmental factor etc.