Construction of HEMS in Japanese cold district for reduction of carbon dioxide emissions

Increasing carbon dioxide emissions have given rise to global warming. Therefore, the need to reduce these emissions is being widely discussed. Decreasing energy consumption by efficient energy use is required to directly influence carbon dioxide emissions. Recently, energy consumption in the civilian sector is rising in Japan. To address this problem, the introduction of a Home Energy Management System (HEMS) is effective because it enables the control of power consumption and an economical energy use. Controlled heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is an essential function to be implemented in HEMS. HVAC control systems are now commercial and several HEMS experiments with HVAC control have been conducted in Japan. However, only few experiments have been conducted in cold districts because peak energy consumption predominantly occurs in summer. Nevertheless, from a carbon dioxide emissions reduction viewpoint, in such districts, the use of kerosene fan heaters, which are popular, becomes a dominant source of emissions around the year, but particularly in winter. In this study, we constructed a HEMS at 16 houses in a cold district, with the collecting function of environmental conditions, heating appliances status, the amount electric/oil energy consumption, and with the control function of HVAC systems. In particular, specially designed fully-controlled and monitored kerosene fan heaters are introduced. To confirm the effectiveness of the proposed HEMS, an energy saving experiment was conducted in which the use of kerosene fan heaters was controlled on the basis of the acquired environmental information, without degrading the room comfort. A reduction in carbon dioxide emissions was monitored along with the comfort level. This is the first experiment which integrates kerosene fan heaters into HEMS. This study demonstrated the ability of autonomous heater control to reduce the burden of residents and the usefulness of HEMS in Japan's cold district.