Making Smart Thermostats Cost-Effective by Predicting the Future

As we move towards an era of green energy sources and smart home energy management systems, the way we address the power flow within the grid is changing. Thus, it is imperative to find suitable ways to manage power more efficiently. Demand management strategies play a very important role in this domain. Thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) can help us design intelligent systems and decide how energy flows within the power grid, leading to better energy consumption patterns and generating savings for the end users. The concept of flexible control of TCLs has been under research for a while now, but there is still a lack of experiments where the concept is applied. This paper aims to reduce this backlog. The motivation behind this paper is manifold. Primarily, it calls for a need to address the issue of smart management of the customers’ demand. This is where thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) come into the picture. The second motivation was to demonstrate the capabilities of a smart grid application in a classroom environment, with the use of basic material available in the market. The third and final motivation was to show that applying distributed control is, for grids on the demand side, more effective and a need of the hour. All these issues have been addressed in this paper. The outcome is an algorithm that can optimize power flow at the distribution level of the grid and handle demand load in a practical and efficient way. This algorithm, which has been implemented on a physical device to provide experimental results, can be further applied in prototypes for their use in homes with smart meters and other smart grid appliances. The results of this paper lead to an efficient management of the load.