Remote Mechanical Switch to Regulate Electricity Consumption in a Household

This report presents the design and testing of a remote mechanical switch for external mounting and the control of an appliance such as a geyser. The switch has applications under household energy regulation and load shedding recovery. It uses a servo motor as an actuator, measures current using a non-invasive current sensor, and provides back-up power of up to 9 hours 40 minutes with a lithium-ion battery. It is a non-invasive IoT-based system for energy management. Two forms of control are available to the user, namely manual Wi-Fi and a timer. A web application is implemented as a user-interface to control the device via Wi-Fi. A SHA-256 encrypted password secures the web application. A user can control the device and view device information on the web application. The timer can control the device automatically in 15-minute intervals. The system request latency is 6 - 7 seconds. If the operation of the geyser is restricted to off-peak periods, savings can be made, and the payback period of the device is less than 2 years.