Smart home energy management systems: Concept, configurations, and scheduling strategies

With the arrival of smart grid era and the advent of advanced communication and information infrastructures, bidirectional communication, advanced metering infrastructure, energy storage systems and home area networks would revolutionize the patterns of electricity usage and energy conservation at the consumption premises. Coupled with the emergence of vehicle-to-grid technologies and massive distributed renewable energy, there is a profound transition for the energy management pattern from the conventional centralized infrastructure towards the autonomous responsive demand and cyber-physical energy systems with renewable and stored energy sources. Under the sustainable smart grid paradigm, the smart house with its home energy management system (HEMS) plays an important role to improve the efficiency, economics, reliability, and energy conservation for distribution systems. In this paper, a brief overview on the architecture and functional modules of smart HEMS is presented. Then, the advanced HEMS infrastructures and home appliances in smart houses are thoroughly analyzed and reviewed. Furthermore, the utilization of various building renewable energy resources in HEMS, including solar, wind, biomass and geothermal energies, is surveyed. Lastly, various home appliance scheduling strategies to reduce the residential electricity cost and improve the energy efficiency from power generation utilities are also investigated.